Ethics is a quality of the heart. It’s something that grows within you, but that isn’t easily seen from the outside. For that to happen, you need to express your ethics in deeds that are visible to others. To paraphrase Henry Ford, “A person who makes nothing but money is a poor kind of person.” Read more...
Latest Content
- Good Deeds Build Great Businesses
- Kept Promises Make Great Reputations
- How to Leverage Your Ethics in Marketing: Part 2
- Should You Leverage Your Ethics in Marketing? Part 1
- Five Benefits of Ethical Leadership
- The Case for Suitability: It's Time!
- Bye-Bye Yahoo CEO: The Ethics of Resume Fraud
- Eight Steps to Hiring Honest Employees
- No Excuses
- Rules Rule
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Content Archive
Business Ethics
Kept Promises Make Great Reputations
National Ethics Association - Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Welcome to the political season . . . a time of countless local, state, and national elections. It’s also a time when politicians make promises they will never keep. What else is new? As the noted Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen once said, “Promises and pie crusts are made to be broken.”
Read more...
How to Leverage Your Ethics in Marketing: Part 2
Harry Lew - Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Should You Leverage Your Ethics in Marketing? Part 1
National Ethics Association - Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Five Benefits of Ethical Leadership
National Ethics Association - Wednesday, May 16, 2012
The Case for Suitability: It's Time!
National Ethics Association - Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Bye-Bye Yahoo CEO: The Ethics of Resume Fraud
National Ethics Association - Monday, May 14, 2012
Watching the ouster this week of Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson leaves us scratching our head. Why would someone talented enough to head up a major technology company claim to have a phony computer-science degree? Thompson obviously was doing fine without it. So he didn’t need to lie in order to get ahead in the tech world. But he did anyway . . . and you know the rest of the story. Read more...
No Excuses
National Ethics Association - Thursday, March 15, 2012
But even though no one is surprised when politicians break their promises, it still is unfortunate. That’s because broken promises breed jaded citizens. And when a country’s citizens become jaded, they lose faith in their future. That’s not a good thing.
In much the same fashion, the issue of promises made and kept is important in all areas of business. For example, when a company claims that its widget does X, consumer expect it to actually do X. If it doesn’t, the company will have a big problem on its hands.
Take the financial services industry. Although at a macro level this industry has a good record of keeping its promises, individual advisors sometimes impersonate politicians and make promises they have no business making. A classic case is when they project unrealistic or deceptive performance results. Recently, Business Week shined a spotlight on what it calls “401(k) predators.” These advisors put on seminars for corporate employees on how to retire early using their existing 401(k) savings. Problem is, to lure clients, they project unrealistic investment returns (14% in one case) and promote aggressive withdrawals from 401(k) accounts. Can’t you just see the approaching train wreck?
I can never understand why advisors use unrealistic projections. Since investment asset classes all have a range of reasonable and expected results, which most clients accept, why jeopardize your business by projecting results that teeter on the leading (bleeding?) edge of the bell curve?
Another type of broken promise is when they fail to follow through on commitments made as a financial professional. These are the promises contained in the National Ethics Association Business Integrity Pledge . . . things such as doing comprehensive fact-finding before recommending a solution, fully disclosing their background and product details, and providing ongoing service reviews.
Not following through on these fundamentals can be as damaging as hyping results. That’s because clients feel let down when their advisor says one thing during the sales process and behaves differently afterward. This disconnect, much like a politician’s broken promises, generates ill will—and encourages client defections.
Whatever your industry, keeping promises is fundamental to your success. Here are some fundamental techniques that will help you:
- Never promise something you can’t deliver
- Always under promise and over deliver.
- View your client promises as a sacred trust.
- Get better organized so you don’t forget the promises you made.
If you can do these basic things, you will develop a reputation for being a businessperson of integrity . . . someone whose word outlives the average political promise and pie crust.
Pen Strokes from Hell: How to Sign Documents Safely
National Ethics Association - Wednesday, November 02, 2011
Regarding large bureaucracies, Mother Theresa once said, “So many signatures for such a small heart.” The same could be said for the U.S. banks embroiled in the foreclosure scandal. Haven’t they learned anything since 2008’s financial cataclysm? Read more...
How to Preserve Your “Full Faith and Credit”
National Ethics Association - Wednesday, September 21, 2011
As we write this column, the news is full of dire articles about the impending U.S. default on its loan obligations. The great debate over our budget has us musing about the meaning of the term “full faith and credit” . . . especially how it relates to the ethics of selling in today’s business climate. Read more...