Panel addresses business ethics, values

With public company scandals regularly making the news and the recent crackdown on corporate accountability, corporate integrity is a hotly debated topic.

A panel discussion on corporate responsibility, business ethics and personal values was held April 11 at Drury University. The panelists were Bill Fingland, BKD LLP managing partner; Judge John C. Holstein, retired Missouri Supreme Court justice; and Jack Shewmaker, former Wal-Mart president.

Lead by example

When speaking to corporations and universities around the country, Shewmaker said he always asks if the organization has a code of ethics. Often the answer is no, he said.

"In a corporation such as Wal-Mart, the ethical standards are largely defined by its leadership," Shewmaker said.

Wal-Mart has a 16-page Code of Ethics, and each year the corporation's leaders review ethical standards with employees, he said. While in leadership roles with Wal-Mart, Shewmaker said he kept a detailed account of the money he spent on purchases, lunch meetings and other transactions. When people told him he was obsessed with details, he explained that he wanted to lead by example.

"In order for me to be able to stand up and say, This is what we stand for and we're going to enforce it,' I had to make sure there was nothing about my dealings that would be suspicious," he said.

Referring to recent public company scandals such as the Enron and WorldCom debacles, Shewmaker said the controversies will continue unless specific ethical standards are defined and enforced.

"There are a lot of executives who are reluctant to take a stand and say what they stand for in a corporation. Until they do so, I don't think these problems will be cleared away," he said.

Ethical standards

Holstein presented a brief history of the legal field. He noted that ethical codes for lawyers were introduced during the first part of the 20th century. Every state in the country has a code of ethics, he said, and Missouri's first code was adopted in 1920s. When he sat on the Supreme Court, Holstein served on disciplinary committees for the Missouri Bar Association.

"It was my unfortunate job every year to be involved in disciplining, in one way or another, about 300 lawyers across the state of Missouri," he said.

Although it seems simple, an ethical breech for which lawyers are often disciplined in the state of Missouri is the failure to return client phone calls, Holstein said.

The Missouri Bar's ethical code includes eight rules, and Holstein defined the first two. The first rule deals with a lawyer's duty to his client.

"As a lawyer, your first duty is conflict-free representation," he said.

The second rule deals with the role of an attorney as an advocate before the court. "Lawyers are reminded in the rules that they are not to misrepresent facts of the law. Occasionally that happens," he said.

Holstein said he has two rules of thumb regarding ethics.

"The first rule is what I call the 30-second rule. If I have to think about it more than 30 seconds, I probably shouldn't do it."

Holstein calls his second rule the best friend rule.

"I always think, what would my best friend think of me if they knew what I was doing right now?

"Ethics is something that has become a part of your being. It is what you are, who you are, and why you do what you do," Holstein said.

Integrity

Fingland said within BKD the words ethics and integrity are interchangeable. He addressed institutional integrity, which he referred to as "the tone at the top."

"Our definition of integrity is simply that we want to do things the right way (and) do the right thing," he said. "The devil is in the details, trying to figure out in many cases what the right thing is."

Leaders of corporations involved in recent scandals wanted integrity, but they failed to talk about it on an ongoing basis with employees and associates, Fingland said.

"You need to set the tone at the top that says, we want to have high integrity," he said. "The leadership must carry through and walk the talk."

"Those in your organization who look up to you as a leader will learn not from what you say nearly as much as from what you do. That will define how integrity is determined in your organization," Fingland said.

"Integrity is about each of us doing what we need to do to make sure we hold on to our integrity and set an example for others," he said.