Who's Watching the Till?

I just finished reading an article from NCR on making ethical business decisions, and it spoke to me about the many opportunities to do otherwise in the workplace. A friend of mine recently changed jobs and shared me with some of the inner issues at her former company related to her leaving - issues of sidelining certain employees because of jealousy, fear, and self-interest; -issues of maintaining the “inner circle”, issues of control, subtle ways to frustrate forward-thinking contributions of some rather than upset the delicate balance favorable to a few. Evil – pure evil centered on getting ahead at any cost, climbing that corporate ladder no matter whose fingers are being hammered in the process. Watching the nightly news confirms that unethical behavior is not confined to corporate America either. There’s so much guidance out there in making good, ethical decisions: James Martin dedicates a chapter in his book, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything to this topic, and the Greenwich Leadership Forum is a resource for Connecticut businesspeople concerned with such. But more simply, David Miller of Princeton University and leader of GLF begins his breakfast meetings by holding up a bible with a copy of the Wall Street Journal tucked inside. Could there be a better visual? Ethical decisions are part of our every day, whether we realize it or not. Hopefully they’re dispatched so automatically that we don’t even consider them; we form ourselves into ethical people. I begin several days each week with morning Mass, and one of my constant prayers is that my two sons, both of whom own their own businesses, make good ethical decisions. And going back to that visual, would you love to see our preachers every weekend begin their homilies by holding up a bibile with the daily newspaper tucked inside?