Blind Spots VII — Indirect Blindness and Moral Compensation
I've noted on several occasions that indirect conflicts are among the
most problematic areas in government ethics. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blind-Spots-Whats-Right-about/dp/0691147507" target="”_blank”">Blind
Spots:
Why
We
Fail
to
Do
What's
Right
and
What to Do about It</a>, a new book by
Max H. Bazerman and Ann E. Tenbrunsel (Princeton University Press),
looks into some of the psychological aspects of the indirectness
problem. The authors' analysis is especially relevant to the
use of charities to get around gift and campaign finance limits, the use of many kinds of organizations,
from PACs to independent associations, to get around campaign
finance laws, as well as issues
involving an official's law firm.<br>
<br>
<b>Indirect Blindness</b><br>
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." <ul>
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.</ul>
In government ethics, the public often recognizes that something is
wrong, but they don't know whom to blame, whom to hold accountable.
They don't know how to deal with the fact that the conduct is legal.
Indirect unethical conduct raises the complexity of a situation,
fogging up our view of its ethical aspects.<br>
<br>
<b>Side-by-Side Evaluation</b><br>
The authors point out a valuable way to deal with indirect blindness:
side-by-side or joint evaluation. What they have found is that we
normally look at real-world actions one at a time, and that, separately
evaluated, even
with great transparency, participants in their experiments viewed
indirect action as less unethical than direct action.<br>
<br>
Evaluating one or more instances of conduct "leads to
more reflective and rational assessments."<br>
<br>
This is another argument that shows the value of open discussion of ethics
matters in a local government organization. We cannot deal effectively
with one news story at a time, taken in isolation. It is important to
compare a particular situation to other situations which have, say, one
different element. For example, a situation where a contractor has
given a large contribution to a mayor's favorite charity can be
compared to situations where a contractor has given a large gift to the
mayor's mother, hired the mayor's brother-in-law, or redone the
mayor's kitchen. People can see that in each case the mayor benefited,
but in different ways. Discussion can focus on the different ways an
official can benefit from different sorts of gifts, and to what extent
these different ways of benefitting should be dealt with in terms of
government ethics.<br>
<br>
These are the sorts of discussions that should be held by those drafting ethics codes, but no one can think of every possible
instance when they are looking at an entire code. There is nothing like
a concrete case to focus a discussion.<br>
<br>
This blog provides a good resource for finding different scenarios to
compare.<br>
<br>
<b>Moral Compensation</b><br>
It's worth noting here the authors' research shows that "people
are more likely to cheat on ... tasks if they are
earning money for charity than earning money for themselves. …
Focus on the good work they achieve appears to provide these leaders
with an excuse to engage in dishonesty with the goal of raising more
funds for the good causes."<br>
<br>
They also argue that "we each maintain a moral identity that
we keep in balance by engaging in minor, compensatory moral behaviors."
That is, when we help a charity, we feel we have the right to act a little less ethically.<br>
<br>
The authors feel that this mechanism, which they call "moral
compensation," can make disclosure alone an ineffective means of
preventing unethical conduct. "Not only did disclosure requirements
fail to
achieve their assumed objectives, they can actually have perverse
effects on ethical behavior. … The goal of transparency is a rational
one, yet it results in unintended consequences when we fail to account
for the psychological process of moral compensation. ... The
opportunity to behave morally by disclosing a conflict of interest
seems to give people a license to engage in future immoral behavior
(inflated estimates, in this case) and therefore to maintain the moral
equilibrium."<br>
<br>
The principal form of moral compensation in local government is the feeling some officials have that they have given so much to their community, for so little pay in return, that they deserve something for themselves and their family. This has probably justified more unethical and criminal conduct by local government officials than anything else.<br>
<br>
The authors feel that the best way to deal with other kinds of moral compensation is
for leaders to "communicate to employees that
unethical behavior is distinct and separate from ethical behavior and
... set a separate standard for the two." This is an unusual remedy in
government ethics. One form of it might be the creation of separate
enforceable and aspirational ethics codes, as in the <a href="http://www.cityethics.org/content/full-text-model-ethics-code" target="”_blank”">City
Ethics
Model
Code</a>, where the enforceable code is supplemented by
the American Society for Public Administration's code of ethics, a
tried and true aspirational code. This way, prohibitions of unethical
conduct appear alongside positive descriptions of ethical conduct, even if most of that ethical conduct lies outside the bounds of government ethics itself.<br>
<br>
Robert Wechsler<br>
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics<br>
<br>
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