Have you ever done what you believed to be wrong because everyone else do it?

Enlightening. I’ve been reading a chapter related to individual ethics in organisations on the literature about Managing that I am studying at the Open University, and I found out an interesting questionnaire devised by A. Lawton (Ethical management for the public services, 1998). For each question, you have to answer Never, Sometimes or Often.
From the 22 original issues, I would like to quote just some of them:

At work…

- Have you asked a colleague to say you are not in when you are?

Little bit innocent, ok. But what about the next ones:

- Have you told “white lies” to customers or clients along the lines of “the cheque is in the post” when it is not?
- Have you criticised your organisations to outsiders?
- Have you exaggerated your achievements?
- Have you revealed confidential information about individuals to others?
- Have you done what you believed to be wrong because everyone else do it?
- Have you tempered advise to senior managers to give them what they want to hear?
- Have you taken free lunches from clients or customers?
- Have you shifted blame for your mistakes to others elsewhere in the organisation , e.g. it’s “head office’s fault”?
- Have you bent the rules to get things done?
-Have you carried out a task that you fundamentally disagreed with?
-Have you acted in favour of a contractor or client because a bribe (or friendship)?
-Have you discriminated against potential or existing staff on the basis of age, colour, sexual orientation, gender, religion, race, etc?
-Have you manipulated performance indicator so as to reach targets?

This questionnaire is not about measuring your level of honesty. It is really about the several options we have to face in organisational life. It reveals the hard daily work of managing our personal values against the organisational ones. The context, the formal and also the informal procedures and behaviours agreed inside the complex community where we spend 8 hour per day, determines how relative could be the answer for each question above.

How leaders and managers set a context of ethic principles, even contained in the mission statements of the organisation (if they are not forgotten words), determines also the extent of commitment and the sense of identity with the organisation. Even more, the real effectiveness and continuity of the business.