Code Word: Conscience

Let’s start with a quick overview of your new book, The Conscience Code.

The book comes out of a course that I teach at the Wharton School in our MBA program, called “Responsibility.” Over the years that I’ve taught it, I have experienced lots and lots of stories and examples that my MBA students have brought me about ethical values and moral challenges they faced in their prior jobs, some [of which] they felt that they’d handled decently but also some that they regretted how they had been handled. The book is really—depending on how you want to frame it—a guerrilla warfare guide for young people in the workplace to try to stand up for their values, or it’s a manual that ethics and compliance officers could use to help their employees create an ethical culture.

I’ve learned after the book came out—and I’ve engaged with a lot of people who are in the professional community about it—that you start to have to frame it a little differently depending on who you think you’re talking with.

I’ve been mainly teaching millennials. Gen Z is coming along now in the MBA world, and they’re really values-oriented people. It’s been shocking to see how many of them have used our program—I don’t think this is limited to Wharton—to pivot away from a toxic culture or boss that they didn’t have the tools to cope with and knew they didn’t want to hang out with. An MBA is a pretty expensive way to find another place to go, but it’s not a bad one. People that come to MBA programs are pivoting from one industry to another or from a traditional background in something organizational, like consulting or finance, and they want to go toward entrepreneurship. The fact that some percentage of these students are also pivoting toward resetting their moral compass to lead them more accurately to a culture and an office where they’re going to feel their values are aligned is really good news. This book is really just a field guide for them to help them manage that.

And as they’re resetting their moral compass, they’re doing that in a world right now that’s completely insane.

I studied ancient Rome, and it was pretty insane, too. I think the pot we’re in always feels hotter than the pot that used to be. There’s no doubt that values as a general matter are very salient to employees in the workplace, to corporations in the global market. The polarization that we’re experiencing in our political environment is a phase shift where people have to put their stake in the ground and say, “Here and no further, as far as I’m concerned,” and the challenges are pretty significant.

Was there anything that surprised you as you were writing the book, something that you didn’t expect to uncover?

I was the chairman, until a couple of weeks ago, of the Business Ethics Department at Wharton. My main areas are negotiation, influence and persuasion. This book is the application of all that to values conflicts; that’s why it’s the guerrilla warfare guide. What I expected, as I dove into writing a book on this subject, was an ethical analysis, puzzles and problems—what do we do if we’re in a culture where the values are different than the values that we might have for the company. What I realized as I got into it—and I took on the perspective of the employee, not the board of directors—was the role that emotions play and how these get managed and processed, how central they are to being able to act effectively and to have the emotional intelligence to turn what we conceive of as negative emotions (fear, anger, guilt, shame) into positive motivations.

We’re in an era of positive thinking and positive motivations. There’s lots of research about how healthy that is for you, and we all want to have days where our positive emotions outnumber our negative ones. But it’s still the case that negative emotions can play a positive role in people’s lives. If you look at the summer of 2020, we saw the social injustice, outrage, the anger, the emotions that prompted the Black Lives Matter movement, the revisiting of social justice in America and even reviewing history in a new light. Those were volatile and hot emotions, but when they were channeled properly, they become the fuel for being effective as an advocate on behalf of very valuable ethical principles. Without the anger, they don’t have the energy. Organizations and people respond to energy.

Isn’t the motivation to do something? To make something happen?

The Conscience Code’s value is to point out that those negative emotions are not to be avoided; they’re to be channeled. The interesting question that comes up next, and which is the one my students had trouble answering is, “I’m outraged. I’m angry. I’m the victim of a sexual assault at work with a client who’s tried to attack me in an elevator during a conference.” Or, “I’ve been asked by my boss to falsify records, that it’s going to go into a pitch for investors. I don’t want to do that.” But then what? The question is how to take effective action. That requires strategy, self-awareness, and skill at influence [and] coalition building. When we’re trying to get executives trained on how to drive an innovation program through an organization that is stodgy, resistant and likes the way it’s doing business, how do you change that baseline set so that they become open to a new way of doing their work? When it comes to ethics and values, people are resistant. They don’t want to hear it. They have rationalizations that are kicking in to keep it away. Nobody wants to think ill of themselves, so they’re defensive.

There are 10 rules in your conscience code. If someone could walk away with only one, which one do you think might have the most impact?

Think of yourself as a person of conscience. In addition to being a manager, salesperson, supervisor, entrepreneur, add a slash to your job title and put “Person of Conscience” after that. I think most people are people of conscience. They know right from wrong, behave in a way where they try to do their best on values at home. They take action in their communities. They may be politically active, or at least they vote. There are people of conscience, but sometimes that gets faded out at work among all the pressures that come to bear, and many rationalizations can dull the sense that you’re a person of conscience. It’s an identity thing. Bring that, and then I would go along with you.

Once you’ve solidly got “Person of Conscience” on your ID or in your DNA, then don’t do it alone. You know something’s wrong, you’re not sure what to do, you feel stressed and anxious about that. Talk about it, get to somebody in the organization who’s a colleague, friend or mentor, someone you trust that you can share this with. And then begin thinking, “All right, what are we going to do about it?” That ally is so important in overcoming these fundamental human wirings. The power of two sounds like common sense, but it’s easy to forget, especially under pressure of a conflict.

In your book, you talk about how the mind plays tricks on you when it comes to rationalizing versus reasoning. So how can you tell if you’re rationalizing versus reasoning before, rather than after, the fact?

My students have taught me. They come to class with an example of, everyone at one of the top consulting firms in the world is cheating on their expense accounts. They’re doing it for a whole host of reasons—“Everybody does it” is the principal one. As soon as you discover that everybody else is cheating on their expense account, you’re sort of a sucker if you don’t. Then your moral sense is dulled, and you say, “Well, I work hard. I deserve this little tip of an extra 50 bucks a day. So I’ll just cheat on my expense accounts too.” Whenever you’re in one of these moments, the rationalization is popping up instantaneously. I think the most important thing, when you know that that’s going to happen, is to let the better angel have a voice.

That’s why I say “person of conscience” is such an important idea, because it’s easy to subject a rationalization to a follow-up question: everybody does it, but what would a person of conscience do? All of a sudden, you say, “I know my grandmother is a person of conscience, and she wouldn’t cheat on her expense accounts, even if everybody else did.” Without throwing your friends under the bus, your value strategy is now, “Maybe I should bring this up to my mentor and say, ‘The firm’s clients are being systematically ripped off by virtue of people claiming expenses that are false. It’s bad for morale, the firm and the clients. What’s a problem-solving way that we can fix this so that people won’t cheat on their expense accounts?’”

What do you think this higher-up is going to think about you? You’re a good employee. This is a real problem. We’d like to solve it. Here’s this leader who just brought it to our attention, and they’re doing it in a really effective way. They’re not screaming and hollering or behaving weirdly. That’s what leaders ought to do: identify value conflicts that are bad for the organization, bring it to the people who want the best for the organization and its people, and start figuring out how to solve them.

In your book, you have a lot of examples of these big, obvious cases of wrongdoing that are happening at work. But for most of us, the ethical dilemmas come in smaller events: a co-worker pays for a social lunch on their corporate card. Or someone’s telling you that they’re working from home, but you know they’re on the beach. At what point is it worth calling someone out on this behavior?

Being an advocate for values and being self-righteous are two different personal qualities. Say the corporate card comes out to pay for personal lunch. It is a problem. If you can get into your friend’s head, they probably have a bunch of rationalizations like, “Everybody does it,” or, “I didn’t charge the last lunch; I’m going to charge this one.” They’ve got it all justified in their head.

Have you ever read Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People? His fundamental insight at the very beginning of that book—and it carries it all the way through—is everybody wants to think well of themselves all the time. When it comes to somebody doing something less than ethical, when you point that out, they’re immediately going to say, “I’ve got a huge defense system that is going to protect me from that.” A person of conscience would not let this happen, so now you have to ask your friend in a gentle way, “I think you might have put the wrong card out. This was a personal lunch, and I’ll be happy to pay for it with my card.” Then they’ll share their rationalization with you, if they have one. You could just go, “Well, I’m uncomfortable with that. If it’s OK with you, let me pay for it.” There’s no harm in that, and you’re not accusing them of anything. Fifty percent of the time, the other person is embarrassed, and they know that they shouldn’t have done it. The fact that you’ve given them a face-saving way to protect the moment, they’ll appreciate and trust you more. The other 50% of the time, they are actually trying to do something wrong. You caught them, and they’re going to look out for you now because you’re not going to be complicit. It’s very often the case that someone who’s on the wrong path is not just on one wrong path. Now you’ve got something really important you need to share with somebody who can do something about it. I’m a big believer in giving problems to other people.

I took the quiz in your book about dealing with conflict or confrontation, and I’m an accommodating avoider.

Welcome to the club. There are lots of people [who] are accommodating and avoiding. There’s a whole chapter on personality, and that’s the hidden iceberg in ethics. People seem to think that, as long as you know what the right thing to do is, then after that you’re either a good person and you do something about it or you’re a bad person and you don’t. That’s not really what’s going on.

People have personalities, and the very fact that there’s a conflict—whether it’s a conflict over bargaining with a salesperson to get your new car or a conflict over whether or not you’re going to try to figure out what to do about this predator who’s hitting on the intern—both of them are going to cause you the same level of anxiety if you’re someone who dislikes interpersonal confrontation. It’s important for people to know that they have this inclination to avoid conflict as a personality thing. It’s not a moral thing; it’s not a failing.

You think, “OK, I’m not the best spokesperson or point person. I want to arrange this so I bring someone who’s got a little bit more of a blunt, assertive way of handling conflict into my circle of allies, who I’m going to rally and then stand with them and say, ‘Me too.’” This person has a certain sensitivity, and you have to be careful not to get them angry, because if they do, then we’ll lose the meeting. Avoiders may be not great at being confrontational, but they’re excellent at diplomatic tactfulness. I think that knowledge of who you are just helps you be more strategic in how you behave and to not shut down.

It all comes back to complementing your organizational intelligence, personal skills and the options that may be available to move something along in a very positive way. It’s so clear, and it’s likely that people will do it alone because they just feel the burden. They don’t know that sharing is the starter kit for success.

I’d like for our audience to have some takeaways. I’ve got a million of them that you just gave, but how can leaders ensure that the conscience code is observed by their team?

The last chapter is “Choose to Lead.” The goal I have for my students—who are going to have positions of responsibility sooner or later—is to start by thinking of yourself as a person of conscience and then conclude by thinking of yourself as a leader of conscience. Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “Stand up for your values, but do it in a way where others will follow you.” I think that’s really the challenge. As a leader of conscience, you want to be much more friendly, familiar and tolerant with conflict. You want to create spaces where people can share their perceptions about how the code of conduct is being observed or whether we can do better on that or if people on this side are not doing their part to create the ethical culture that we all need. You have to be much more conflict-tolerant, [which] means you have to do a better job training people under you to be conflict capable. My courses on negotiation teach conflict management. It’s an alien subject, but it’s something that you can either have or cannot. I was talking to a nurse leader last week. I asked, “How much conflict management training do you give your nurses?” She said, “None.” They have value conflicts all the time, and I’m sure they have many other kinds of conflicts, but getting that training for people can really help them.