The business of ethics: the importance of working with integrity.

During the dot-com heyday, many executives witnessed their company's employees go from being Internet millionaires on paper to standing empty-handed when the bubble burst and being laid off en masse.

"As a young executive, at first I didn't understand what the president meant when he said that we weren't to reveal the real numbers. I later found out we actually had two sets of books," says a professional who worked for one such doomed company. Now an executive for Latina magazine, he has learned an important lesson in speaking up against an unethical situation--even at the cost of losing a job. "You'll lose your job anyway," he offers, "and may end up doing jail time as well."

A recent Public Agenda report on the state of the American work ethic and its relationship to America's economic vitality entitled A Few Bad Apples? found that those who participated in the study had concerns about declining values and increasing greed that are widespread throughout society.

"There's a misconception that ethics is something we only have in our heart, that we learn from our parents or from our church, and that businesses don't need to concern themselves with it," says Marjorie Kelly, founder and editor of Business Ethics magazine. "We are very aggressive as a business culture at creating institutional forms that encourage the kind of behavior that we want, but we have not done that with ethics. In fact, businesses have done quite the opposite by setting [overly] aggressive growth and sales goals and then sending the message that you better hit the mark no matter what," she adds. In such a precarious environment, falling short is not tolerated. "That's a setup for unethical behavior," Kelly explains.

Despite The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which sets a standard for corporate accountability and penalties for wrongdoing in response to the increasing number of corporate and accounting scandals, some experts believe that the responsibility for maintaining an ethical environment is up to management. "Business ethics is never going to be successfully regulated. There are bad people who are always going to want to do bad things," says Martin L. Taylor, vice president of organizational services for the Institute for Global Ethics.

You can set a standard for good behavior. Experts offer the following advice on creating a climate of integrity:

1 Set an example through strong leadership.

"Ethics programs are generally aimed at employees when it's management who are the ones in trouble," says Taylor. Employees expect supervisors and managers to set an example. Perhaps that's why half of the employees surveyed in a study sponsored by the Ethics Officer Association and the American Society of Chartered Life Underwriters & Chartered Financial Consultant admitted to acting unethically or illegally while on the job. Approximately 60%, however, believed that ethical dilemmas are an avoidable consequence of doing business.

2 Set realistic goals. "Set your goals in conjunction with your team members," urges Kelly. "Don't sit in your office with a calculator and a spreadsheet and think about what's going to make your stockholders and you happy. Get down in the field with the people who are talking to the customers and find out what goals are realistic."

3 Provide training. 71% of those polled believed serious commitment by management to address ethical issues would help with the problem. "Ethics training in and of itself is very important, but it's got to be in the context of an overall program," advises Michael Schlein, deputy director for public affairs at Citigroup. "If you just have the ethics training, I don't think you'd be accomplishing very much. It would be nothing more than just a reminder, but it won't change a culture," he says.

4 Distinguish between compliance and ethics. "You can pass all the laws, all the reforms, all the structural changes, but when it comes right down to it," offers Marianne Jennings, professor of legal and ethical studies at the College of Business of Arizona State University, "ethics is about being forthright even when the law allows you to be less than forthright."