And yet, after some probing, this leader admitted that sometimes his junior managers hesitated to bring bad news up the chain. The pressure to meet aggressive targets creates concerns for the person who can't always report success. When we discussed training that could help encourage employees to bring up bad news early this leader was very open and eager for the training. "But this isn't 'ethics' training," said the division president, "it's management training."

The role of business ethics as a distinct discipline is changing rapidly in today's work environment. It was only a few years ago that ethics officers were building ethics departments within their companies to manage integrated investigations, communications, and training. Today, with the focus on building ethical cultures, ethics officers are seeing the need to influence key business practices that go far beyond awareness of code standards and corporate values.

Is this cause for larger departments and a bigger "seat" at the proverbial table? There is a challenging paradox in that the successful ethics officer of tomorrow will be the one that has the smallest organizational footprint. Their success will be in having other functions, such as Organizational Development (OD), HR, and Communications, be successful.

The latest issue of Ethikos, an industry newsletter, looked back over the last 20 years of business ethics. There certainly have been tremendous gains in terms of awareness of ethics issues as well the deployment of key program elements such as helplines, codes, and training. However, several veteran ethics professionals expressed concerns that over 20 years, the ethics movement hasn't succeeded in actually inculcating "responsible behavior in business people." As Lori Tansey Martens said, "we have not really stepped up to the challenge of creating that still elusive (and not always defined) ‘culture of ethics.'"

Now that we've succeeded in establishing controls to make the lawyers and auditors happy, we need to look anew at the institutional influencers of behavior: HR and organizational development. As Frank Daly said, "the argument can be made that the responsibility for not only an ethics program but also a well-run compliance program ought to be a managerial skill."

Ethics officers need to be more precise in their practice. Today's "ethics" officer needs to be very clear in distinguishing their "ethics" responsibilities from their "compliance" responsibilities. The need for "compliance" is of course ongoing. Employees and managers need to be made aware of the standards of behavior they are expected to follow and organizations must have robust processes to permit employee concerns to be communicated and investigated. But that's not "ethics."

"Ethics" must be the discipline of helping managers and leaders create the culture where raising issues is safe, as well as socially acceptable, and where frustrations stemming from today's business pressures can be safely vented. Helping organizations first assess cultural vulnerabilities and then coordinate functional leaders in communication and training to address these issues is the most valuable role an ethics officer can play.

This isn't the end of ethics, so long as ethics leaders see these changes and embrace them. Otherwise ethics will be marginalized as ethical managers seek other avenues to improve business practices.

DAVID GEBLER, J.D. is President of Working Values, Ltd., a business ethics training and consulting firm specializing in developing behavior-based change to support compliance objectives. 

More Working Values articles

WORKING VALUES LTD. is a business ethics and training company. Through a variety of products and services, including Web-based compliance and ethics programs, on-site training, video and award-winning ethics games for employees, Working Values aims to align employee behavior with company values. For more information as to how Working Values can narrow your company's Behavior-Standards Gap, visit www.workingvalues.com or contact cgebler@workingvalues.com. For news on ethics in the workplace, visit SmartPros Ethics & Compliance.