Business Ethics

Ethics in communication is an ever-changing aspect of our everyday lives. As technologies, like the Internet or medical science, advance, we are faced with an ever-increasing amount of ethical dilemmas in how we communicate. Coping with so many new ethical choices has forced many corporations and individuals to rethink how to approach the sharing and safeguarding of information that they posses. This change has led to many debates on what is modern day ethical communication. Additionally, for the first time, we see organizations forming to name standards for corporations to follow in the ethical use of communication.

Ethics in Communication with Others

Any discussion of ethics, or ethical behavior, must start with a definition of what exactly ethics are. Most people assume that unethical behavior always involves something illegal, which is simply untrue. Take the example of slavery, which we know was legal in this country at some point in the last 150 years. We all agree that even though slavery was the norm at the time and sanctioned by the government, it was still an unethical practice. Some examples of where we see failures in ethical communication are the cases of Enron, MCI, and Tyco. All of these large corporations used unethical communication simply for their own gain. If no system is put into place to monitor whether a corporation, an organization, or the government is communicating to its stakeholders ethically or not, these types of scenarios will play out over and over again. In the workplace, many of us have seen unethical communication practices by the companies for whom we work. Adjusting our behavior in these situations is important if we are ever going to break the cycle that has been going on for far too long.

One of the first issues that needs to be tackled is how to promote an environment where corporations either feel compelled or are forced to communicate in an ethical manner. This situation is actually one of the few cases where a legitimate government organization needs to be formed. We have the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) that oversees publicly traded companies' stock and earnings disclosures. A few of the problems with this organization are its size and method of operation. The SEC is extremely small in comparison to the number of companies it must track. Also, the SEC is almost entirely a reactionary organization. In other words, it doesn't usually take action until some discrepancy has been discovered by other sources. This somewhat passive behavior can allow the unethical disclosure of financial statements to continue indefinitely. If the SEC was better funded, had expanded powers of investigation, and hired specialists who understood the modern ways in which companies try to hide losses and gains, the Commission would have a much better chance of finding unethical behavior in corporate communications. Then and only then could stricter laws and jail sentences be put into place to punish the guilty. If a CEO or CFO of a large corporation knew there was a good chance he would be caught and faced with a life sentence in a maximum-security penitentiary, he might choose to rethink his communication with his stakeholders.

From day to day in my workplace, I witness many forms of unethical communication exhibited. The most appalling part is not even the fact that the executives are being unethical in their communication to clients and employees; instead, it's the way they exhibit such a cavalier attitude and have no regard to who it might affect. In dealing with clients, the executives often lie about features that do not exist, performance metrics, and promised dates for delivery. Continually operating in the manner has put the company in a tenuous position in that it has lost trust from both customers and potential customers. This loss of believability has impacted the company's ability to compete in the marketplace. Once-loyal customers are now hesitant to engage in deeper licensing