Our membership has requested that our organization develop an ethics program. Where do we start?

Congratulations to your membership for recognizing the value of a good ethics program. Your members and community can greatly benefit from ensuring that the chosen ethical values are consistently applied throughout the organization, and can also greatly reduce ethical risk, such as damage to the nonprofit’s reputation.

Some such requests are made just after serious lapses in ethics, and that greatly complicates efforts to introduce an effective ethics program. I will deal with that possibility later in the article.

In Canada, and in much of the world outside the USA, the primary focus of ethics programs is helping people understand what ethical standards to aspire to, and how to apply ethical values to their everyday work. The rules-based systems common in the USA are not seen as either effective (except in increasing the income of lawyers) or appropriate in Canada. People spend too much time looking for loopholes, or beefing up enforcement systems to deal with the worst offenders, instead of trying to make, and help others make more ethical decisions in the first place.

Where to start?

At a nonprofit, the choice and articulation of ethical principles or values rests with the board of directors. Creating some motherhood list like “honesty, fairness and integrity” doesn’t cut it. You need an extensive dialogue on what different ethical values mean in your specific organization. Broad staff involvement in these discussions is highly beneficial, as they know the situations in which the ethical values will be applied in your specific organization, including when ethical values conflict. Remember that the bulk of ethical decisions are made many times a day by staff such as receptionists, intake officers, and accounting clerks. Include but don’t overly focus on the small number of decisions made at the top.

The initial dialogues should be distilled into a set of aspirational sentences and then taken out to all staff and volunteers, preferably with realistic examples of the ethical dilemmas that arise in the organization. Facilitated meetings should be held to discuss the values, work through the examples, and to add new realistic examples for others to discuss. The board can then adapt and formalize the aspirations into an approved Statement of Ethical Principles, and make them part of the strategic plan. Scrutinize every plan to see if it lives up to these values. The budget is particularly important as what is valued gets resources, and what gets resources is valued.

Reinforcing ethical behaviour

Although the dialogues should continue at every staff meeting, board retreat and more, you are now ready to move on to ways of reinforcing ethical behaviour. You need a code of ethics or conduct as an orientation document and a reference for desirable behaviour, worded as positively as possible. People will need training to help them understand and apply the code.

If you are not already using the language of ethics in all communications, start to. Explain decisions – whether strategic priorities, program design or staff promotions – with explicit references to the Statement of Ethical Values. When giving feedback or commending someone for good work, highlight the values that were exemplified. Get people to share stories where the ethical values were reflected in some special way. In other words, keep the principles and code a living document that is referred to often, not a piece of paper on the wall.

Strive for an organization where everyone learns about, understands, and does their best to apply a common set of ethical values. Most people want to be ethical, and will take pride in being part of an ethical organization. That pride has been shown to lead to more creativity, innovation, and tangible results, along with retention and recruitment of good staff and volunteers.

This approach does not mean blissful ignorance of the potential for abuse. You still have accounting controls to reduce temptation and catch misconduct. Over time, you should review all policies to make sure they reflect your ethical values. You should add an ethics reporting system so that both highly ethical and highly questionable behaviour can safely become known, and rewarded or investigated respectively. Your human resource management (and volunteer management if separate) manuals should outline disciplinary procedures for breaches of ethics, particularly willful ones, and you may need to take disciplinary action occasionally.

These rule-based actions are added to deal with the exceptions, the “bad apples” who choose to violate the standards or others who fail to understand their ethics training. There is no reason to aim the main thrust of your ethics program at the few rather than the majority.

When to call for back up

The development and implementation of a customized ethics program will be helped by expert assistance from an ethics practitioner, if that is an option for you. Such help is particularly needed if the atmosphere is negative, possibly because what mobilized the membership to ask was awareness of at least one serious ethical issue in your organization.

If you are dealing with a serious lapse, you have to both reassure the membership that the issue in question is being handled appropriately, and that you are taking the right actions for the future. Try to keep these two action areas completely separate!

Depending on the situation, you may need to be dealing with police, lawyers, forensic accountants, resignations, terminations, reimbursements, and discipline – what a list of negatives! Get advice as best you can on how to proceed, and keep the membership informed as each stage unfolds, with as much transparency as personal privacy and legal considerations allow. The biggest challenge is not to overreact with sets of rules that are focused on that issue and are not grounded in your ethical values. You may need a few temporary rules that will later be replaced by your more comprehensive approach.

You will find some helpful links at www.ethicscentre.ca and www.epac-apec.ca, and some useful tips at www.managementhelp.org/ethics/ethxgde.htm. Many umbrella organizations in the nonprofit sector have identified ethical standards for their member organizations or the sector in general (see www.cicic.ca for a good example of code and guidance documents and related program). Also, many of your staff may belong to professional bodies such as the Association of Fundraising Professionals or a regulated health profession, and should bring those ethical standards to their work with you.

Since 1992, Jane Garthson has dedicated her consulting and training business to creating better futures for our communities and organizations through values-based leadership. She is a respected international voice on governance, strategic thinking and ethics. Jane can be reached at jane@garthsonleadership.ca.

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