Ethics learned from example, not in a class

By John Florez
Published: Monday, July 19, 2004 8:00 a.m. MDT
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People who teach ethics to adults remind me of people who think they can "fix the flaws" of their prospective spouses once they are married. Forget it. It's too late. You just have to love them.

But that is not the case with our elected leaders. We have a choice. We can keep them or vote them out.

Ethics is moral conduct. It is your conscience telling you what is right from wrong, rather than waiting for a law to tell you the difference. Conscience is the rerunning of the tapes in one's head of how parents teach children right from wrong. And it's taught by how parents behave and the kind of care and supervision they give to their children, not by talking alone. Adult ethics seminars are too late.

Moral behavior, in simple terms, is nothing more than learning how to live and relate to others in a civil society.

From top government offices and corporate suites of America to our own hometowns, we see an ethical deficit. When caught, grown people give middle school excuses for what they have done wrong. Like it or not, these and other public figures are the role models our children are watching. As we have seen, our young people tend to emulate them, including justifying their behavior in the same way. They offer the same denials, place blame or give excuses when caught doing wrong. "Everybody's doing it. I don't recall. I forgot. It's not as bad as what other people have done." How can we expect anything different from today's kids?

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When we elect leaders, we assume they will not do wrong. If they do wrong, we hope that they come forward on their own, admit responsibility and do the right thing. Most often, however, unethical behavior must be found out. When found out, it is actually refreshing to have someone simply take responsibility for it. And, in an odd way, a few of those who have been found out, have admitted their guilt, taken responsibility and taken steps to make it right, have actually become role models.

We used to hold our political leaders to a higher standard. Now, we tolerate them even when they seem to have "flexible standards" they make up as they go. Not unlike some parents who tend to blame the school for their child's misbehavior, we have leaders, and colleagues of "ethics violators," who give excuses or overlook their behavior. They only reaffirm the decline of ethics in our society.

What is more offensive to the public is how politicians trivialize the problem and try to smooth things over by launching a public cleanup campaign with special committees to investigate the problem they created in the first place by not carrying out their oversight responsibilities. Instead, they want to start an ethics training program for staff with the belief that people will then come out being ethical.

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