Sunday, January 29, 2012

GOVERNMENT ETHICS: The Lucifer Effect I - IV, Blind Spots I - VIII & Apologies: Central to a City's Ethical Environment, Apology Revisited and Apology - The Canary in the Mine of Local Government Organizations

ABSTRACT: In the context of the current campaign for mayor and city council and City Administrator Jason Stilwell’s moral, non-situational ethics philosophy and in a constructive attempt to address the poor ethics environment of Carmel’s city government characterized by city employees’ claims of “hostile workplace environment,” sexual harassment, employment discrimination and retaliation, subsequent monetary settlements totaling approximately $1.4 million and the City Council’s failure to accept responsibility and give a complete and honest apology, titles of posts with selected excerpts for educational purposes and links to posts written by Robert Wechsler, Director of Research, City Ethics, from CityEthics.org “making local government more ethical,” are presented.

The Lucifer Effect I — A Situational Approach to Local Government Ethics
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Wed, 2011-10-12

Local governments are hardly prisons, but they are situations that, especially where there are poor ethics environments, can place strong pressures on individuals to go along with unethical norms. The pressures involve us in loyalty, secrecy, becoming and remaining one of the gang, and playing the games necessary to raise funds in order to get re-elected and to appease those with power, whether in the government, in the party, or in the community (that is, large taxpayers, employers, developers, contractors, organizations, and their lobbyists).

The Lucifer Effect II — Situational Forces
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Wed, 2011-10-12

The Effect of Situational Forces on New Officials
New officials often get pulled into feeling superior to ordinary citizens. They come in as members of the public who don't know what's what, but they have the chance to become a member of the in crowd, knowledgeable, respected, and arrogant. This is hard to resist. And with the idea of having special knowledge and becoming one of the elect comes the idea that you have special rights, that you deserve things others don't deserve. You are entitled to treat yourself and others differently from the average citizen. This is one of the principal factors in the process of co-opting. And once you're accepted, it's hard to act in such a way that you might be kicked out. It takes a strong rather than a good character. It takes independence of mind as well as courage.

The Lucifer Effect III — Debriefing and Other Ways to Deal with Situational Forces
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Thu, 2011-10-13

Zimbardo employs a three-part analysis, adding to the individual and the situation what he calls "the system," the forces that create the situation, that give legitimacy to the unethical norms in a poor ethics environment. "The system" is not just the current leaders, because systems, their norms and unwritten rules have a history. But each set of new leaders chooses whether to allow the unwritten rules to continue, and they also determine the level of pressure that is placed on subordinates to play by the rules, as opposed to the laws or the ethics, and how to create this pressure, that is, through intimidation, setting an example, making examples of those who don't play by the rules, etc.

The Lucifer Effect IV — Miscellaneous Observations
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Fri, 2011-10-14

Resisting Influences on Our Behavior
What should a local government official or employee's goal be with respect to dealing with situational forces? It's good to be involved with our environment and to trust those we work with and for. But we also need to distance ourselves to some extent. One advantage government officials have is that there is someone in our organization other than superiors, colleagues, and subordinates. There is the public. Distancing oneself from other officials and employees can take the form of feeling responsible to the public, trying to look at things from their point of view. Taking the public's point of view will cause you to look for appearances of impropriety, which are the core of government ethics.

Being Your Own Guard
I've focused exclusively on the guards in the Stanford Prison Experiment, because they are effectively in the position of government officials: the people with power. But there is something to be learned from the way the prisoners acted. As Zimbardo says, they "became their own guards." They accepted and internalized the rules that were imposed on them, and even when they were given the chance to leave prison, they walked right back in.

This is true, to some extent, of the public. It has the true power in our system of government, and yet it accepts the rules that officials place on them and usually feels powerless. This can best be seen by the failure to attend public meetings and even to vote. But even among those who vote and attend meetings, it can be seen by the acceptance of decisions without explanations and the acceptance of explanations that are seriously inadequate. It can be seen in such statements as, "They're all crooks." It can be seen in the tendency not to stand up to irrational limitations, unless they are seen as partisan. It even takes the form of open support for unethical behavior, especially when one is member of a group that has finally taken power and has, one feels, the right to take what is "rightfully ours," even if what is taken are one's own taxes.


Blind Spots I — Unconscious Unethical Conduct
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Mon, 2011-04-04

Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press) is a must-read book for government ethics practitioners. This new book (it came out just a couple of weeks ago) incorporates a great deal of research in behavioral ethics to look (1) at what is going on in the minds and actions of those who act unethically but do not intend to act unethically, and (2) at what can be done to change their behavior for the better.

Bounded Awareness
The mechanism that prevents us from seeing what we need to see to make ethical decisions is what the authors call "bounded awareness." We tend to exclude important, relevant information from our decision-making by placing bounds around our definition of a problem. In effect, we put on blinders, like a race horse. We narrow our concept of responsibility (e.g., to our boss rather than to the public), we focus on instructions that are given to us or support a decision our supervisor or local legislators support. We do not ask for neutral external input, and we reject those who differ with us as partisan or self-interested. We focus on meeting a deadline rather than seeking out more information and opinions. We limit ourselves to our functional boundaries, such as engineering, law, finance. We give in to groupthink, that is, seek or accept unanimity rather than consider alternatives. We act out of fear, that is, fear of rejection, of being seen as goody-goody, of the consequences of whistle-blowing, of threatening our job. We focus on the law rather than the ethics.

Blind Spots II — Motivated Blindness
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Wed, 2011-04-06

Although we have more trouble seeing our own unethical behavior than we do seeing others' unethical behavior, Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel, the authors of the new book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, have found that people have a tendency "to overlook the unethical behavior of others when it is not in their best interest to notice the infraction." They call this "motivated blindness."

In the context of local government ethics, motivated blindness can best be seen when local government attorneys are advising their "clients," that is, officials, especially top officials and local legislators, on ethics matters. Too often, they give officials the advice that is in their personal interest (that is, what will not hurt their personal reputation) rather than the advice that is in the public interest.


Blind Spots III — Ethics Training, Ethics Fading, and Ethical Reasoning
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Wed, 2011-04-06

"Most of us dramatically underestimate the degree to which our behavior is affected by incentives and other situational factors." This is one of the most important sentences in Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press).

Ethical Fading
This sentence is central to the authors' concept of "ethical fading." Ethical fading involves the elimination of the ethical dimension of a decision. Goals, rewards, informal pressures, even compliance systems effectively blind us to the ethical implications of what we do. The result is that we do not see our behavior as ethical, but as something else: acting for our agency, acting strategically, considering the financial costs and benefits, pushing our party's platform, doing what we are required to do by law, doing what it takes to look good.

Ethical fading is an important obstacle to acting ethically.


Blind Spots IV — Egocentrism
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Thu, 2011-04-07

Egocentrism (what they call the "egocentric bias") is at the heart of unethical behavior, in the government ethics sense. When the public interest conflicts with an offical's self-interest, that self-interest is what leads the official to deal irresponsibly with the conflict. It is the official's self-serving judgments that lead him to different conclusions than others have regarding what is a fair solution to a conflict situation.

Blind Spots V — Informal Norms
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Fri, 2011-04-08

Government ethics involves itself primarily with the formal norms set forth in ethics codes. But as the authors of the new book Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It (Princeton University Press), point out, "It is through informal mechanisms that employees learn the 'true values' of the organization."

Only when the informal and formal are the same, will the formal be truly effective.

When you do not hear complete and honest apologies, you probably have a poor ethics environment, that is, an organization with informal norms that put self-interest (that is, the true leaders' self-interest; these "true leaders" are not always the ostensible leaders) over the public interest.


Blind Spots VI — Psychological Cleansing and Obfuscation
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Sat, 2011-04-09

The denial of unethical behavior, which usually occurs long after the behavior itself, is usually the worst part of an ethics scandal, the adding of insult to injury. The public is faced with two possibilities when an official denies that he did something unethical. This dilemma is well described in Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press):

It is possible that the person doesn't actually believe he behaved ethically, but rather claims to be ethical to reduce the damages associated with his unethical actions. [Another] explanation is also the most troubling in terms of improving one's behavior. It is possible that the person inherently believes in his own ethicality, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Note that the authors say the second explanation is more troubling in terms of improving one's behavior, not what many of us would say: that the official who thinks so well of himself is simply in denial, detached from reality, caught up in a world of power and yes-men. When you believe you act ethically because you are an ethical person, you have no incentive to analyze situations for their ethical aspects or bring ethical reasoning into play.


Blind Spots VII — Indirect Blindness and Moral Compensation
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Sun, 2011-04-10

Indirect Blindness
The authors talk about a tendency they call "indirect blindness ... the tendency not to notice unethical actions when people do their dirty work through the behavior of others."

Even when data suggesting unethical intent is obvious, we still let those who behaved unethically off the hook. ... The public and the press too often fail to notice the dirty work that individuals and organizations perform through intermediaries. … By engaging in indirect action under predictable circumstances, decision makers trigger indirect blindness in the eyes of observers and thus are let off the hook for the harm they cause.

In government ethics, the public often recognizes that something is wrong, but they don't know whom to blame, whom to hold accountable.


Blind Spots VIII — How to Handle Our Blind Spots
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research, City Ethics
Mon, 2011-04-11

One solution is to align what they call our "want" and "should" selves, that is, our self-interested and our public-interested feelings, by becoming aware of our blind spots, that is, by recognizing our vulnerability to our own unconscious biases.

Another way to deal with our blind spots is training that helps us identify and correct the distorted feedback we give ourselves, emphasizing the psychological mechanisms that lead to inaccurate recollections and unethical behavior.


Apologies: Central to a City's Ethical Environment
Thu, 2006-07-06
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research
City Ethics, Inc.

"As canaries were to mines, apologies are to a municipality's ethical environment. If you don't see a good number of sincere apologies, then ethics and accountability are probably dead in your town."

"According to Aaron Lazare, in his excellent On Apology (Oxford University Press, 2004), an apology is "an encounter between two parties in which one party, the offender, acknowledges responsibility for an offense or grievance and expresses regret or remorse to a second party, the aggrieved." An apology can also include an explanation for the offense, an expression of shame or guilt, an expression of intention not to commit the offense again, and reparations."

"One reason apology is such a good sign of an ethical environment is that it requires just what good ethics requires: honesty, generosity, humility, courage, sacrifice, and commitment to preserving trust in government."

"And then there is the ever popular cover-up. It usually begins by ignoring a grievance, and then moves on to denying what happened and trying to demonize the grievant. Of course, cover-ups are always worse than the offenses, and if they come out, they become a big scandal, undermining public trust more than any other approach. Cover-ups are a bet that the offenders won't get caught. And most cover-ups stay under cover, but they use up a great deal of resources for a horrible cause."

"The failure to apologize has serious consequences. It makes people feel powerless and cynical, and it makes people believe that their values are different from those in government, that government cannot be trusted to hold up its side of the social contract, that in government there are no consequences for doing wrong. All of these feelings make people less likely to get involved in government matters. The failure to apologize fuels people's anger, making compromise more difficult
."

Apology Revisited
Wed, 2007-03-28
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research
City Ethics, Inc.

"This is equally true of government officials. The coverup is worse than the crime. Everyone knows this, but so many officials believe they can get away with it if they make a big enough smokescreen. And often they do. But at what cost, to them and, most important, to the public? People are forgiving, but not when you refuse to respect them and recognize the harm you cause."

"Government officials too need to have full disclosure and complete transparency. It will dramatically lessen the number of ethical mistakes, cut corruption, and make the public feel more trust in their government
."

Apology - The Canary in the Mine of Local Government Organizations
Tue, 2008-05-20
Robert Wechsler
Director of Research
City Ethics, Inc.

"The lack of true apology from members of a government organization is a dead canary in a mine. An organization without true apologies is one where officials put themselves ahead of the good of the community, where people think in terms of getting away with mistakes and misconduct. Such an organization is closed and without ethical leadership. It is an organization consisting of people who either do not respect the dignity of others, or are too afraid to speak up."

ADDENDUM:
Top Ten Ethics Films

Recommended Reading

2 comments:

RSW said...

Robert Wechsler probably does not know about Carmel, but he nailed Carmel. He absolutely nailed Carmel, the city attorney, city council, mayor and the public.

This example is right on.

The denial of unethical behavior, which usually occurs long after the behavior itself, is usually the worst part of an ethics scandal, the adding of insult to injury. The public is faced with two possibilities when an official denies that he did something unethical. This dilemma is well described in Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What's Right and What to Do about It, a new book by Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press):

It is possible that the person doesn't actually believe he behaved ethically, but rather claims to be ethical to reduce the damages associated with his unethical actions. [Another] explanation is also the most troubling in terms of improving one's behavior. It is possible that the person inherently believes in his own ethicality, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Note that the authors say the second explanation is more troubling in terms of improving one's behavior, not what many of us would say: that the official who thinks so well of himself is simply in denial, detached from reality, caught up in a world of power and yes-men. When you believe you act ethically because you are an ethical person, you have no incentive to analyze situations for their ethical aspects or bring ethical reasoning into play.

Wow!

Anonymous said...

Four months in and the honeymoon is over. It is business as usual at city hall. You know things are not what they should be when inquires to other cities are answered in good faith, faster and more completely compared to inquires to Carmel's city hall.