Beware public shaming

In this podcast, Julia Marcus of Harvard Medical School tells us that shaming people who don’t wear masks or keep their distance will not help solve the pandemic.

She explains that there is a difference between public shaming and the more gentle peer pressure of using social norms. Social norms are the positive side of “everybody’s doing it”, making people feel safe to follow the herd (and unsafe to leave it).

Explaining a social norm to a person is a powerful form of nudge. It’s something that we can do in our organizations to create the right culture. For example, if we want to change the behavior of those who wait until the last day to complete their online ethics training, we can share the fact that 90% of their colleagues complete their training 1 week or more before the deadline. This is more likely to have a positive effect than publicly shaming them for completing their training on the last day (perhaps by publishing their names on the intranet).

There is another danger to public shaming: we risk creating a new, undesirable social norm. When people see others having fun at the beach or at a bar, partying without a mask, they might want to do the same. When employees see that many of their colleagues wait until the last minute to complete their training, they might think “why not”?

Public shaming not only feels wrong, it can also prove to be counterproductive.

Care not what others think

“I care not what others think of what I do, but I care very much about what I think of what I do. That is character!”

Theodore Roosevelt

Every leader is called to be an antiracist, today more than ever.

Taking a stand will expose us to attacks and criticism. We may damage a relationship with a relative, lose a friend, or be excluded at work.

Let us not care about it. Our character is at stake, and that of every nation on Earth.

Frequent and short

Some scientists believe that we should start using COVID-19 tests that are far less sensitive but fast and cheap. They argue that if the low cost and speed of the test allows us to screen a person every few days, we will be better off than screening that person only once each month with a more accurate test.

This idea reminded me of the value of short and frequent messages about the importance of ethics and compliance in an organization. With every message, a manager is inviting her team to ask a question or raise a concern. An annual ethics stand-down day, complete with speakers and videos and games, can certainly send a strong message. But these events will catch most employees on a day when they don’t have a concern to raise, and leave the others unsure about whether they should speak up. How serious can a company be about ethics if they only discuss it once a year?

In almost everything we do at work, every day, there is an opportunity to cheat, steal or lie. You know that, your employees know that. Make it easy for them to ask question and raise concerns. And do so every day.

WFH creates a safe space for reporters

With more people working from home, tips to government agencies have spiked. It feels safer to report wrongdoers when you don’t have to face them in person every day.

There is an opportunity here for ethics & compliance professionals. With the right type of outreach, we can get our colleagues to share their concerns with us and provide the help they need. Remember that most whistleblowers go to the press or the government only after they feel they have exhausted all avenues within their workplace.

Be visible on your internal social media channels (Slack, Teams, Yammer, etc.). Write in your company newsletter. Invite employees to a video call where you discuss the Code of Conduct, a recently updated policy, or the new risks your company is facing because of COVID-19. These types of activities will invite employees who have something on their mind to connect with you.

How to beat the two pandemics

Many people refer to COVID-19 and racism as “the two pandemics.”

With COVID-19, our job is to keep our distances, wash our hands, and wear a mask while we wait for a vaccine. For anyone trying to do the right thing, the task is fairly simple.

With racism, our job is much more complex. The steps to a cure are not as simple. But the first step for just about anyone appears to be education and learning. And today, at 7 PM UTC -4, we all have an opportunity to learn from National Book Award winner and New York Times bestselling author Ibram X. Kendi, as he discusses his book “How to Be an Antiracist.” For anyone trying to do the right thing, today’s task is fairly simple: register for the free event and listen with an open mind.

We can’t just wish these pandemics away. But we can wear a mask. And we can learn how to fight racism. That’s ethical leadership.

Twitter and trust

When Facebook was found, again, to have improperly shared the personal information of millions of its users last year, it had to be dragged in front of the US Congress to explain itself. Facebook said that “mistakes were made” and that “they should have done better.” Somehow, that left me feeling that they weren’t really sorry about the angst caused, and perhaps that they had done it on purpose.

When 130 Twitter accounts were compromised last week, Twitter soon issued a statement stating “We’re embarrassed, we’re disappointed, and more than anything, we’re sorry. We know that we must work to regain your trust, and we will support all efforts to bring the perpetrators to justice. We hope that our openness and transparency throughout this process, and the steps and work we will take to safeguard against other attacks in the future, will be the start of making this right.”

Twitter’s statement alone restored my trust. It made be believe that they were truly caught off guard, that they originally had defenses in place that they believed would protect its users, and that they will not rest until the problem is fixed.

When trust is broken, we can make two types of statements. One that will build trust, or one that will further destroy it.

Is your ethics training useful?

Try the test below:

How difficult was that?

That’s the feeling employees get when they complete the quiz at the end of most online ethics training. They listen to the story of a fictional employee who overheard a colleague say he was willing to pay a bribe to get a contract and the quiz reads “What should Joe do? (A) Report what he heard to Legal; or (B) Nothing because he’s not personally involved in the wrongdoing.”

I’m exaggerating a bit for effect, but not that much.

That kind of training does not help employees recognize ethical dilemmas, does not show them how to take action, and thus is a huge waste of your budget.

Consider instead a live session between a manager and her direct reports (video call is great). Change the script so that it’s not clear that what Joe overhears is a promise to pay a bribe. Make the conversation about what Joe should do and how he should do it. Then shift the discussion and talk about how employees in your company, not Joe’s fictional company, should react in this situation. Who should they talk to? How can they reach them? What should they say?

The purpose of ethics and compliance training is to help employees be compliant and ethical at work. Is yours achieving these goals?

On exceptions

If you have a rule that your child must go to bed at 9 PM every night, and one night they ask permission to stay up late, you need to be careful about how you grant that permission. You must make it clear that it is an exception and that the rule hasn’t changed. Otherwise your child will come back with the same request night after night.

At work, things are different. As a leader, you can’t allow employees to break a policy, not even once. Or allow employees to ignore one policy but follow the others. Once you open the door to breaking a policy, you have lost all power to enforce any of them.

If a policy must be broken or ignored, then a leader ought instead to revise it or delete it.

How wrong we are

Since becoming the father of three kids, I’ve often given thought to the fact that so many professionals complete 40+ hours of continuing education each year to maintain their professional license, and yet most parents don’t spend a minute in any given year to learn about parenting.

I suspect it’s because we believe that our experience as children has taught us how to parent. And because we’ve never seen a book about parenting in our house growing up.

How wrong we are.

A similar thing is happening in the world today with White people and racism. We think that our experience as Whites informs our understanding of the Black experience. We’ve never read a book about racism, anti-racism, White fragility or anti-Blackness. We don’t think we’re racists.

How wrong we are.

As I write this post, 4 out of 5 New York Times bestsellers are about racism and anti-racism. They were not written for Black people. If you are White and aspire to be an ethical leader, you owe it to yourself to pick one up and learn. I recommend you start with Me and White Supremacy.

Becoming a parent conveniently reveals the hardships of parenthood. But White people can’t become Black for a revelation of racism. We must instead educate ourselves, and stop being wrong.

The Work

Once in a while, I invite readers of this blog to share their thoughts on a post I’ve written by using the comment section. Few ever do.

Every now and then, I post a Tweet for my followers that read “Have a business ethics question? Tweet away!” No one ever has.

But at work, when I schedule a Q&A session with the ethics officers that I support (currently numbered at ~250), I get a full house and we often run out of time before we run out of questions.

Why the difference? It’s because I have done The Work with my team. The work of getting to know them personally, of listening to their needs, of trying to fill those needs again and again until we succeed, of celebrating their achievements, day-in, day-out, for 15 years.

Today, schedule a meeting with those you support and ask two questions: “how are things? and “what can I do to help?” If the answers are “fine” and “nothing”, you have to do The Work.