If you’re an independent counsel or senior leader interested in professional ethics (which should be everyone!), this superb article on LinkedIn by Brian Rogers FCMI should be required “lessons learnt” reading.
If you’re not familiar with the Post Office Scandal, it’s the worst miscarriage of justice in British history (so far), in which hundreds of sub-postmasters were prosecuted by the Post Office for theft and false accounting after known flaws in IT systems causing the problem were suppressed from courts.
It led to people being bankrupted, imprisoned and several tragically taking their own lives.
But one lesson is that this decades long institutional failure came about, as so often, by the compounding smaller actions of leaders enabled by people in ethical professions like law and accounting.
How could a legal professional allow themselves to sacrifice ethics and professional standards such that they watch innocent people go to prison on the basis of decisions they’ve taken under the mantra of “protecting the business”?
The key statement that jumped out at me from Brian’s article summarises the challenge that presents itself to anyone in a legal or leadership role:
“The road to unfair trials is paved with rationalisations that seemed reasonable at the time.”
That’s a concept well-explored by the excellent book by the late Professor Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect:Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, analysing his work in the Stanford Prison Experiment and beyond.
Why do ethical and good people commit actions which turn out to be unethical and cause harm to others?
An overstatement? Something that could “never happen to me”?
That’s the kind of behaviour that allowed some people to enable the wrongful prosecution of sub-postmasters like Seema Misra OBE and Lee Castleton OBE.
So think about this as a lessons learned exercise, Legal Counsel and leaders.
When faced with an executive leader (perhaps your CEO or someone in HR) asking you to put the business first, will you stand firm on your ethical duties when your job is on the line?
Or will you water down individual statements in an acceptable way that cumulatively lead to an institutional failure that causes harm. Where is your personal line on this?
The day may well come when the line is tested - perhaps by a CEO like Paula Vennells, who in testimony to the inquiry was reported to have criticised legal counsel Susan Crichton for putting her ethical responsibilities to the profession “above the needs of the business.”
Yes, and rightly so!
Your decision comes not always in the clear cut action of a command to “do this wrong thing” but in the small steps you might self-justify, as you move deeper into the grip of “the Lucifer Effect.”
Have a think about that today with your morning coffee as you read Brian’s excellent piece.
Found this post interesting? Share this content from Beyond the bullet points with others.
Image: Ethics by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.