How Good People Cross the Ethics Line in Business

Published on Linked In - July 8th 2015

When does preferential treatment become bribery? At what point does friendly banter become sexual harassment? How does a joke become bullying? Traditional views on unethical behaviour in business have focused on fixing errors of judgement by teaching people how to think better. Bad things are done by bad people who either lack character, have poor values or are affected by greed. The solution is more training and education in values and ethics along with character building exercises.

This makes sense if unethical behaviour is the result of conscious reasoning, however new research in the fields of social psychology and neurocognitive science indicate that this may not be the case. Social psychology experiments show that we are often unaware of the moral aspects of behaviours and associated decisions and that contextual factors can change incrementally so that we are blind to ethical dilemmas. Slowly our ‘norms’ change such that what would once be considered unethical behaviour now beco…