As I suggested earlier, business ethics in the traditional sense concerns what businesses owe to consumers. It is thus fitting to look at the responsibility to be honest about the products you sell and the services you offer; to provide excellent customer service; to inform stakeholders what’s going on when the CEO takes a leave of absence; and to apologize when you have made a mistake. But as we saw when we analyzed the box-office dilemma in chapter 3, business ethics is also about what consumers owe to businesses. The customer isn’t always right, and businesses not only have a right to stand up to unfair demands; they have an ethical obligation to do so. In this chapter, we’ll look at business ethics in this broader sense — what businesses and customers owe to one another — by considering the following issues:
• The unethical customer
• The CEO taking a leave of absence
• Outsourcing customer service
• The ethics of “let the buyer beware”
• The ethics of apologies
I will use the term stakeholder in some contexts and shareholder in others. A stakeholder is anyone who has a stake in an organization, not necessarily a financial stake. Examples include, but are not limited to, employees, clients, and members of the board of directors or trustees. Shareholder is a term of more limited scope and refers only to those who own shares of stock in a public or private corporation. Generally speaking, shareholders are stakeholders, but not all stakeholders are shareholders.1
Frank, a restaurant manager, once told me about a customer named Tilly who ate most of her meal, complained that “it didn’t taste right,” and said she didn’t think she should be charged for it. “It didn’t feel right to go along with her, but my philosophy is that the customer is always right. Did I do the right thing?” Frank said. “One more thing: I know for a fact that Tilly isn’t poor, which would have made the situation quite different.”
Frank had no obligation to do what Tilly asked. In fact, doing so was wrong because it enabled Tilly to take advantage of the establishment. We ‘ve all gotten meals at restaurants that weren’t to our liking, but the time to tell the server about it is after the first bite, not the thirtieth one. Giving Tilly a free meal simply because she asked for it wasn’t fair to the other customers who paid for what they ate. The fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair, and its call to give others their due, is a crucial one in business ethics and applies not just to how businesses treat customers but (as I’ll explore in more detail in chapter 9) how customers treat businesses, too. By getting something for nothing, Tilly wasn’t being fair to Frank’s establishment, and by giving her something for nothing, Frank wasn’t being fair to the other customers, who eventually paid for their meals. The customer isn’t always right, as this situation shows.
Business ethics is usually discussed in terms of the obligations that businesses owe to customers: manufacturing safe products, providing warranties on those products, honoring their advertisements, and the like. But businesses have rights as well as responsibilities, and foremost among them is the right not to be taken advantage of by their customers. By the same token, customers have responsibilities as well as rights. Tilly would rightfully be outraged if Frank advertised “Get a free dessert with the purchase of one entrée” but then declined to provide Tilly with a dessert because the campaign was costing the restaurant too much. “You promised a free dessert, so I expect you to stand by your promise,” Tilly could reasonably say. Tilly is entitled to be treated justly by the restaurant, and the reverse is true as well.
The first principle of ethical intelligence, Do No Harm, is also implicated by this scenario. If Frank caves in to whatever customers want from him, even if what they’re asking for is unfair, his restaurant’s revenue will be diminished, perhaps significantly so. The irony is that Frank’s attempt to please his customers — that is, to do something good — can actually cause harm to the business he represents if those customers take advantage of him. The notion that “it’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice” has a limit: the Do No Harm principle.
Suppose that next week, a man named Ralph pulls the same stunt that Tilly did and that, like Tilly, Ralph is able to pay for his meal. Here is how Frank could rise to the occasion with ethical intelligence.
FRANK. So you say that the meal didn’t taste very good?
RALPH. That’s right, and I shouldn’t have to pay for it.
FRANK, looking perplexed. Hmmm. Well, sir, please help me to understand why you didn’t tell your server this after you had the first bite.2
RALPH. Are you calling me a liar?
FRANK. Not at all. It’s just that you ate a lot of it, considering it didn’t taste very good.
RALPH, getting angry. I figured I’d give the food a chance.
FRANK. It looks like you gave it many chances. Almost to the end, in fact.
RALPH. Are you saying you’re going to make me pay for this lousy food? Haven’t you ever heard that the customer is always right?
FRANK. Satisfying the customer is our first priority.
RALPH, figuring he is getting his way. Good.
FRANK. But there are limits to what we can do. You ate most of your meal, so it’s only fair that you pay for it. But here’s what I’ll do. (Ralph smiles and anticipates getting a certificate for a free dinner on his next visit.) I’ll be happy to give you a complimentary soda the next time you come for lunch or dinner.
RALPH. A free soda? That’s all I get?
FRANK. I’d say that’s more than fair.
RALPH. Well, I don’t. I’m never coming back here again. (Ralph reaches into his wallet and hastily pays the bill but doesn’t include a tip for the server.)
FRANK. I wish you all the best.
By sticking to his principles — the principles of ethical intelligence — Frank is losing a customer, so he obviously must choose wisely how often he will decide that the customer isn’t right. But no matter what business you’re in, you’re entitled to be treated fairly by your clients. When a customer makes an unfair request, you not only have a right to refuse to honor it; you have an ethical obligation to do so.
On January 17, 2011, Apple cofounder and CEO Steve Jobs told employees that he would be taking a medical leave, his third in seven years. He didn’t reveal any details about his illness but asked that his family’s privacy, as well as his own, be respected.3
Was this an ethically intelligent request for Jobs to make? What would an ethically intelligent response for Apple’s stakeholders be?
In chapter 2, I explained that the third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others, calls upon us to keep private things private. I suggested that the two physicians who discussed a patient’s medical condition and mentioned the patient’s full name in a hospital elevator had betrayed the patient’s trust. Presumably that patient would not have wanted sensitive information about his medical condition discussed in front of people like me, and he was entitled to have his wish respected.
But not everyone has a right to have information about his or her health kept private. Some leadership roles require transparency because others have a right to know whether their leader is capable of doing the job at hand. For example, the president of the United States cannot legitimately claim a right to medical privacy; democracy requires that citizens be informed about their leader’s health because health is a necessary condition for being able to protect their interests through this supremely demanding work. That the public has a right of access to the president’s medical condition has been recognized only recently. Information about Grover Cleveland’s surgery to remove an oral cancer, Woodrow Wilson’s stroke, and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s melanoma was kept from public view for fear that it would damage the president’s political power, but this is now rightly regarded as something one expects in a totalitarian state, not a democracy.4
The CEO of a publicly traded company is to the company’s stakeholders what the leader of a democratic society is to its citizens in at least one sense: both leadership positions entail restrictions on the leader’s right to privacy. No one forces a person to take the helm of a public company or a country; one does so with the understanding that the job requires a degree of transparency that doesn’t apply to most other people. Stakeholders and citizens alike are entitled to know what is going on with the person they chose to lead them. When this person falls ill, he or she ought to disclose his or her current medical condition and prognosis, the treatment options, and how well he or she is doing as this ordeal progresses. Thus the ethically intelligent thing for Jobs to have done when announcing his medical leave would have been to explain the nature of his illness (while rightfully expecting stakeholders to leave his family alone).
Some worry about the financial implications for the company that such a disclosure would have. But in the long run, the organization is likely to benefit, not lose, financially because it’s the lack of information that causes investors to express concern about the company’s future and downgrade its stock valuation. If ever there was a situation that illustrates the old saw “Knowledge is power,” it is this one.
Just as a CEO of a public company who needs to take medical leave has responsibilities toward stakeholders, stakeholders have responsibilities toward the CEO. Compassion, an aspect of the fifth principle of ethical intelligence, is high on this list. When a CEO announces that he or she has a serious illness, stakeholders ought to be concerned not just about the company but about its leader as well. Recall from chapter 6 that compassion literally means “to suffer with.”
This discussion highlights the need for every company to have a succession plan in place. After all, nothing lasts forever, so the prudent thing for any leader to do before he or she becomes ill is to anoint the next in line. No one likes to confront the reality that we’re not going to live forever, but the ethically intelligent CEO does so anyway.
It was a dark and stormy night, and I was having major problems with my desktop computer. Having anticipated this moment, I had purchased an extended warranty plan, and I called the manufacturer’s customer service phone number, assuming that I’d be given prompt attention.
“Hello, my name is Steve,” a crackly, faraway voice said on the other end of the line. It sounded as if he were underwater. “Maybe the service center is in Atlantis,” I reasoned, and proceeded apace with my concerns. “Hi Steve. My computer isn’t booting up, and I don’t know what to do.”
Steve asked me to check something, but because of his thick accent, I couldn’t understand what he was referring to. I asked him to repeat himself, which he did, but I still couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Even with two more tries, I was unable to comprehend what Steve wanted me to do.
“I’m sorry, Steve, but I simply can’t understand what you’re saying,” I said with frustration. I knew that he wasn’t in the United States, so I asked him if he could please transfer me to an associate who was. He politely said he would, but I was then put on hold for over twenty minutes while some insipid advertisement for the company played over and over. I hung up the phone, thirty minutes older than I was when I placed the call but no closer to a solution.
I called the toll-free number again and got someone named Mary, but it was close to impossible to understand her as well. It was clear that I’d have to hire someone at my own expense to fix my computer. It was also clear that I’d never again buy another computer from this company, which I’ll refer to here as the World’s Worst Customer Service Company Inc., or World’s Worst for short.
The leadership of World’s Worst apparently thought it would save money by outsourcing its customer service overseas. In the short run, it may very well have done that; by slashing labor costs, it enriched the bottom line and kept shareholders happy. But in the long run, outsourcing customer service is both bad for business and ethically unintelligent. In fact, it’s bad for business because it is ethically unintelligent.
The most valuable commodity a business has, and the most difficult one to come by, is positive word of mouth. There are lots of ways to engender this. You can build a superior product. You can create a memorable marketing campaign. You can get publicity by doing good works in the community. All of these will inevitably get people talking about your company, which is harder and harder to make happen in our increasingly crowded marketplace.
The problem with outsourcing customer service is that this practice creates what Jed Clampett would call “a whole heap” of negative word of mouth. Time is precious, and who wants to spend an inordinate amount of time in an often vain attempt to communicate with a company employee who is halfway around the world and cannot speak English effectively? My experience with Steve was not the first one (or second, or even third) that I had with World’s Worst, and you can be sure that I have warned my wide circle of friends and associates to avoid this company at all costs. In telling my friends about my horrible experiences, I discovered that — not surprisingly — I’m far from the only customer disgruntled by the customer service provided by World’s Worst. One can only imagine how much business the company has lost by valuing short-term financial gain over standing by the people who buy their products. World’s Worst has a formidable task ahead of it because it’s harder to repair a poor reputation than it is to create and maintain a good one in the first place.
Smart businesses recognize that the surest way to hold on to their current customers and create new ones is to place customer satisfaction front and center, not only in their mission statements but in their day-to-day operations. This means that customer service representatives must be able to communicate clearly. This also means that these employees should be fluent not only in the primary language of the customer base but in their culture, customs, and idiosyncrasies as well. The root of customer is custom, and customs are largely a mystery to those who live and work outside of the culture concerned.
To criticize the practice of outsourcing customer service may seem racist. After all, the people who have those outsourced jobs are largely people of color whose first language is not English. Isn’t this proposal a thinly veiled discrimination against non-U.S. cultures?
No, it isn’t. The reason it is wrong for U.S. businesses to give customer service jobs to non–native speakers of English who live overseas has nothing to do with race. My argument here isn’t even against outsourcing as such. That is, even if one believes that businesses have an obligation to minimize labor costs, it doesn’t follow that customer service positions are best suited to contractors from other countries.5 These jobs require being able to communicate well. As anyone can attest who has had a poor customer service experience with residents of Bangalore, Manila, and other cities where U.S. outsourcing is popular, company representatives there for the most part are not measuring up, so they ought not to have jobs where being intelligible in English, the primary language of a company’s customers, is essential.
The key word in the above conclusion is intelligible, not intelligent. This analysis should not be interpreted as a slight against the intelligence or integrity of non-U.S. citizens. Nor do I mean to suggest that residents of the above cities do not do good work. I’m merely observing that it can be difficult to understand what someone who isn’t a native speaker of English is saying. This can be the case even with some Americans who are native English speakers but who may lack communication skills or have especially heavy regional accents. They’re not candidates for customer service jobs either, for the same reason. Also, my argument against outsourcing isn’t limited to interactions between U.S.-based customers and business representatives located in other countries. Conversational challenges exist between peoples of any two countries or regions in which the primary languages are different from one another.
Adding to the intelligibility issue is the fact that the phone connection to people in distant lands is often substandard, as my experience with Steve showed (and I’ll bet this has happened to you as well). Outsourced customer service thus presents two major obstacles to effective communication: a language barrier and a technological challenge. These obstacles strain and, in some cases, damage relationships with the very people a business purports to serve, so outsourced customer service runs counter to the first principle of ethical intelligence, Do No Harm, as well as the third principle, Respect Others. It subverts two crucial objectives in business: to understand the needs of customers and to meet those needs effectively. If enough customers become disgruntled, their negative word of mouth is likely to impede profits, which prevents the company from fulfilling the second principle of ethical intelligence, Make Things Better, for its stakeholders.
It is ironic, then, that a for-profit organization would choose to engage in a practice that subverts its very mission: to make a profit. The problem isn’t the mission itself. After all, a business isn’t a charity. Where too many businesses falter, though, is leaping from the premise “Money is good” to the conclusion “We ought to do anything legal that will maximize profits.” This leap of logic is ethically troublesome since much wrongful behavior is legally permissible. Furthermore, the obsession with making the most money, and doing so sooner rather than later, blinds one to the very thing that promotes a flourishing business in the first place: satisfied customers who keep coming back for more. A business will not and cannot succeed if it puts greater emphasis on short-term gain than on customer satisfaction.
Corporate officers should explain to shareholders that the smart business is one that values meeting the needs of customers above all else, including short-term financial gain. Only by having its priorities straight can a company count on long-term financial gain. The goals of making a profit and satisfying customers are not mutually exclusive. Just the opposite is true: these two goals are inextricably bound together.
Here, then, is a challenge to your own company: put a premium on serving the needs of customers by keeping customer service jobs in this country. You’ll make your clientele happy, generate positive word of mouth, enrich our own economy, and, in the long run, enjoy continued growth and success. Your customers (and shareholders) will thank you for it.
Keeping customer service jobs at home, rather than sending them abroad, is the ethically intelligent thing to do for any business that wants to be in business for a long, long time.
When I was ten, I bought some gizmo that turned out to be a piece of junk.
“Caveat emptor!” my mom told me when I showed her the busted toy I’d just spent my hard-earned allowance on.
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“Let the buyer beware,” she said. “You can’t believe everything people tell you when they want to sell you something.”
I know I’m not the only one who has thrown away cash because of inaccurate advertising. The list of false or deceptive claims made about goods and services is as long as forty miles of bad road and just as perilous. Thus it has made sense for consumers to do their due diligence before buying something even as relatively inexpensive as a microwave oven or dinner for two at a local restaurant.
But caveat emptor is a poor business philosophy because it is ethically unintelligent.
Traditionally, the business-customer relationship was distinguished from the one between physicians and patients or that between lawyers and clients, in that customers were assumed to have the wherewithal to assess the claims that businesses made about their products and services. The burden of proof for assessing the validity of these claims therefore sat on the shoulders of consumers. Even before reviews became readily available on the Internet, buyers were theoretically in a position to decide whether a vacuum cleaner, a piece of furniture, or a stereo was all that its seller said it was.
This sort of detective work was not (and, to some degree, still is not) considered possible in health care or law. How can patients reasonably decide whether the antibiotic or antidepressant their doctors recommend is safe and effective? If you need to understand a complex contract, how can you expect to do this effectively if you haven’t had specialized training in the relevant law? We trust health-care providers, attorneys, and other professionals not only to possess expertise that we don’t but also to be concerned primarily with our best interests, not their own. As long as they honor this trust, it makes sense for professions to be less regulated than business is. After all, the main objective of business is to make a profit, not to benefit the public, right?
This question presumes that there is an inherent conflict between making money and helping others. But it doesn’t require an MBA to see that the Great Recession grew out of the false belief that not only does prosperity involve placing profits ahead of people — but it also requires this. For example, lenders who gave subprime mortgages to people at a high risk of default didn’t care that the loans wouldn’t be repaid. They knew they would make a nice profit when these loans were packaged and sold to Wall Street right after closing, and that’s exactly what happened. Their short-term gains resulted in long-term losses for you and me, and many of the businesses involved in this shell game have tanked. Making money without regard to how the money was made turned out to be both unethical and bad for business.
In a postrecession world, successful managers and entrepreneurs will be men and women of conscience who understand that profitability depends upon building and maintaining trust with the public. The secret to reclaiming this trust lies in something that hasn’t been a staple of business practice: telling consumers the truth. Let’s look at a recent example of how false, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims have hurt one important business sector and why it no longer makes financial sense to regard the truth — and, by implication, the well-being of the public — in such a cavalier fashion.
In 2010, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned several companies against making false or misleading claims about their products.6 A juice manufacturer stated on its website that its product could work wonders for high blood pressure, clogged arteries, and even prostate cancer. Such claims, if true, would certainly qualify the beverage as a miracle drug, but there is no evidence that such a cause-and-effect relationship exists. Another company, on the packaging for one of its ice cream confections, stated that its product had zero grams of trans fat per serving. That statement is true, but the confection also has twenty grams of saturated fat per serving. No one would rationally consider ice cream to be a health food, but this company’s partial truth could mislead people into thinking that this treat is healthier than it is.
The full, unvarnished truth has been treated with such indifference by many in the business community for so long that taking advertisements at face value is ridiculous. But this is why it’s no longer feasible for businesses, whatever sector they’re in, to trade in less than the truth. Treating consumers with respect, which means, in part, telling them the truth, is the only way companies can hope to turn a cynical public around and restore their faith in commerce. Remember Warren Beatty’s film Bulworth? It suggested that telling the truth in politics was the stuff of comedy and satire. But honesty is no laughing matter in government or business.
Why are business executives, advertising professionals, and car salespeople consistently at or near the bottom of Gallup’s annual Honesty and Ethics survey?7 It’s not because business is an inherently ignoble calling; it’s because too many people in its ranks consider high ethical standards (or any ethical standards at all) to be unnecessary or even liabilities.8
The smart manager, however, can no longer afford to think this way. The companies that prosper in our postrecession economy will be the ones committed to being forthright about what they sell. They will view truthfulness and other elements of ethical intelligence not as burdens that must be accepted reluctantly but as the key to building and maintaining relationships with customers and ultimately enriching the bottom line. Doing right by your customers is the best way for you to do right by your business and its stake-holders.
It’s time to retire caveat emptor — “let the buyer beware.” The new motto in business should be vincit omnia veritas — “truth conquers all.”
A running gag in the 1970s sitcom Happy Days was Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli’s inability to admit a mistake. The first two words, “I was,” came out fine, but it was that third one, “wrong,” that always tripped him up. Try as he might (and boy, did he try), the Fonz simply could not proclaim error. “I was wrrrr-rrr-rrr——” was about the closest he could get. Decades later, many of us are still laughing at how Fonzie exemplified this all-too-human foible.
We’ve seen that it’s hard to accept constructive criticism, but the ethically intelligent thing is to somehow find a way to do just that. We ’ve also recognized that it can be difficult to resist an attraction to a coworker, but acting on that attraction is generally not consistent with ethical intelligence. As the Fonz reminds us, having the courage to admit we’ve screwed up is one of the hardest things to do. It’s also one of the most important.
We’ll examine the ethically intelligent apology by going through the back door, so to speak. Here are some examples of the wrong way to apologize, along with an explanation of how they contradict the principles of ethical intelligence.
1. Say, “Mistakes were made.” This classic dodge is a favorite of business leaders and politicians alike. Although its use in government isn’t limited to one political party, the phrase is most famously associated with Ronald Reagan’s 1987 State of the Union address, in which the president used it to refer to the Iran-Contra scandal.
“Mistakes were made” is rightly referred to as a “nonapology apology” because this phrase is in the passive voice and thereby absolves the speaker of any responsibility. Its use by a leader is ethically unintelligent because a critical component of leadership is accountability. Stating that “mistakes were made” is simply another way of saying, “Bad things happened on my watch. But other people did them, and I can’t be blamed.”
2. Change the subject. Refusing to address a problem one has caused makes psychological sense. After all, who wants to admit that he or she is flawed in some way? Those who feel that admitting error is a sign of weakness are likely to change the subject when confronted with mistakes they made. It’s not an ethically intelligent move, however, because it fails to acknowledge the reality that we are, in fact, less than perfect. Recall that one way to apply the third principle of ethical intelligence, Respect Others, is to tell the truth to those who have a right to know it. A leader shows respect to the people he or she is leading by informing them of things they need to know, which often (but not always) includes an acknowledgment that the leader has erred in some way.
3. Drag your feet. Remember when U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod was abruptly fired after Andrew Breitbart circulated an edited video of Sherrod that made her appear racist? Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack eventually apologized to Sherrod and took full responsibility for having exercised poor judgment by dismissing her.9 Sherrod accepted the apology and said that it made her feel better. But she also stated that it “took too long” to come, and she ultimately chose not to accept the White House’s offer to be reinstated.10 Vilsack deserves credit for owning up to his serious mistake and attempting to right a wrong that he had committed, but for the person on the receiving end of the injustice, he should have done this sooner.11
The fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair, has a temporal component. It’s not enough to give someone his or her due; one must do so in time.
4. Deny there is a problem. Burying your head in the sand in response to a blunder is ethically unintelligent because there is such a thing as reality. Your mistake is still a mistake, whether or not you’re able to accept this fact. Both it and the consequences that followed from it occurred, whether or not you want to believe this is true.
5. Admit that you did x, but claim that x isn’t wrong. When someone accuses you of having done something wrong, and you believe what you did was right, you should be prepared to back up your actions with a rational argument. Ethical intelligence involves more than doing the right thing; it also requires justifying — that is, providing good reasons for — the choices one makes. Reasonable people can disagree about many things, including the rightness or wrongness of some forms of conduct.
But certain actions, such as theft, fraud, and assault, cannot be defended from an ethical point of view. Imagine that your financial adviser took the money you gave her to invest for you and used it instead to pay for her son’s college education. When you discover this and confront her with the evidence, she replies, “Yes, I lied to you and took your money without your knowledge or consent. You may think this is wrong, but I think it’s right because without this money, my son couldn’t have afforded to continue his education.” Presumably, your reaction wouldn’t be to say, “Well, we just have a different opinion about whether lying and stealing are right or wrong.” You would believe — correctly so — that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and that being a liar and a thief is in the second category, no matter who is considering the issue or what arguments are marshaled in their defense.12
Some things are ethical, some things are not, and it’s wrongheaded to believe otherwise. Your thief of a financial adviser isn’t so much making a legitimate defense of her actions as she is refusing to accept responsibility for what she did, apologize, and make the appropriate reparations.
6. Blame someone else. The worst oil spill in history started when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico. Although the rig was licensed by BP, the company’s CEO, Tony Hayward, initially had this to say about his company’s accountability: “The responsibility for safety on the drilling rig is Transocean [sic]. It is their rig, their equipment, their people, their systems, their safety processes.”13 BP eventually accepted the blame for the catastrophe, but not before a mountain of evidence made it impossible for them to deny their culpability. For years to come, this will no doubt be the ultimate gold standard for how not to apologize for one’s mistakes.
The fourth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Fair, calls upon us to give others their due. When you mess up in some way, fairness requires an apology. However, some forms of wrongful conduct are so serious that a mere “I’m sorry” isn’t enough of a response. With this in mind, here are some guidelines for making ethically intelligent apologies.
1. Admit your mistake quickly and take personal responsibility for it. Don’t say “We made a mistake” when you mean “I made a mistake.” Even if you’re not the head of your organization, the buck should still stop with you.
2. Apologize first to the person you have wronged. That is the person who matters most.
3. Speak from the heart. An insincere apology is as bad as no apology at all. People can tell when you really mean it, even if you think you’re a good actor and can fool everyone. If you truly believe you’re not in the wrong, don’t apologize — but be prepared to defend your position.
4. Realize that sorry is just a word. For that word to be meaningful, you must do your level best to avoid repeating the mistake. This means coming up with a strategy and sticking to it.
5. Know that a meaningful apology is a sign of integrity, not weakness. Anyone can blame others, or deny that he or she did anything wrong, or lie about what really happened. Only a strong, selfpossessed person can own up to his or her mistakes, and only such a person commands true respect.
6. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you can’t do something well on your own, invite others to work with you on the problem. If the problem is beyond your grasp, consider asking someone else to take it on, if it is appropriate for you to do so.
When you’re on the receiving end of an apology, it’s useful to keep the fifth principle of ethical intelligence, Be Loving, in mind (and heart). Ethically intelligent people do what they can to honor a person’s sincere apology, even though their anger pulls them in the opposite direction. The following guidelines present ethically intelligent ways of responding to apologies.
• If someone has done something wrong and apologizes to you, accept the apology graciously. (However, bear in mind the other points in this list.)
• You are justified in expecting a person to avoid repeating the behavior that required an apology in the first place.
• Depending on the situation, you might need to make clear to the other person what the consequences will be if he or she makes the mistake again.
• “Three strikes and you’re out” is fine for baseball, but in other areas, it may take only one strike for someone to be justifiably banished from being a player. Some mistakes are so serious that you should not grant a second chance. For relatively minor errors, however, or if the task at hand is unusually difficult, it might be unfair not to allow more than three opportunities to get it right.
• If the person who apologized continues making the same mistake over and over, you may have to say, perhaps regrettably, “I can’t in good conscience give you another opportunity to slip up,” no matter how much that person continues to apologize.
The 1970 film Love Story featured the memorable, if perplexing, line “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” Even if this were true, there are many other areas where we do have to say we’re sorry — and mean it. The challenge for all of us is to admit we’ve made a mistake, to do our best to ensure we don’t do it again, and to forgive others who sincerely regret their own poor judgment. No one is perfect, but most of us do have the capacity to right our own wrongs and to accept the imperfections of others.
Five areas in the business/stakeholder relationship can — but don’t have to — compromise one’s ethical intelligence.
Just as managers and others in business have an obligation not to take advantage of customers, they also have a right not be taken advantage of by customers. Exercising this right may result in some lost business, but the ethically intelligent response to this is, “Goodbye and good riddance!”
It is ethically intelligent for a CEO who must take a medical leave of absence to explain to stakeholders why he or she is doing so. Both the third and fourth principles of ethical intelligence — Respect Others and Be Fair — require this response. Stakeholders should remember that the fifth principle, Be Loving, calls upon them to be compassionate at times like this.
Because of the potential for poor communication, which can lead to disgruntled customers choosing to take their business elsewhere, the practice of outsourcing customer service is inconsistent with ethical intelligence. A business’s obsessive focus on short-term financial gain can be damaging in the long run to its relationships with customers and shareholders alike.
“Let the buyer beware” is an ethically unintelligent way to do business because by being forthright about what customers can expect from their goods and services, businesses are more likely to engender trust, promote positive word of mouth, and do well by everyone with a stake in the company.
Apologizing with ethical intelligence means admitting to, and taking responsibility for, the mistakes one has made, asking for forgiveness, and making the necessary reparations. Those who have been wronged have a right to expect that the wrongdoer will not repeat his or her mistake. Accepting an apology graciously is a compassionate thing to do, and forgiveness makes it easier (if not easy) to move on. Bitterness hurts only the person feeling it.