Can we teach ethics?
Filed in archive Ethics by leon on June 21, 2006

management professor Tony Buono taught a class on corporate scandals with colleagues pitching in from finance, accounting and even the philosophy department. The four picked through the cases of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and Shell."At the end of the semester, the number of students in a simulated trading room who were caught in misconduct or misusing information for insider trading was significantly higher than at the beginning. The students said, 'You taught us how to do it,' Buono recalled."
A fascinating and thought-provoking story from this report that really sums up some of the questions about whether ethics can be taught.
Ethics is very much about character. As this piece points out, the question is whether character is the missing part of the equation in the ethics classroom.
Yes, but it's just a start. What's really missing from all the focus on ethics is morality. Ethics is about rules and codes of behavior. Morality is about a higher focus that goes beyond self-interest. It's something I have blogged on here.
Everyone talks about creating ethical organisations. We would be better off building moral ones instead.
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