There was a time when the merest suggestion of serious misconduct could end a political or corporate career. Today, too many prominent figures meet damaging findings, investigations or scandals not with contrition, but with defiance. Yet the public has not stopped caring about ethics. Consumers may not investigate every company they use, but when trust is broken, it can carry a direct commercial cost.
YouGov research found that unethical business practices had caused 35% of UK adults to lose trust in a company; among people who had lost trust in a brand, two-thirds stopped buying from it altogether.
Against that background, the other day I was asked about our ethics policy. My response was that we don’t regard ethics as a policy or a separate corporate initiative. Like every responsible business, we have the policies and procedures we need, but a written document cannot, by itself, make an organisation ethical.
Ethics starts with people
In my experience, ethics must be part of an organisation’s culture, and that means making character a central consideration in the recruitment process. That might sound simplistic, but after decades in business I know that legal knowledge can be developed, while qualities such as integrity, empathy and humility are much harder to teach.
Technical expertise grows with experience. But integrity, humility, kindness and a genuine desire to do the right thing are qualities that make people who they are, and as an employer it is very difficult to create those qualities through a policy or training programme alone.
When we recruit, we’re, of course, looking for excellent lawyers. Our clients deserve nothing less. But we’re also looking for something that doesn’t appear on a CV. We want people who care, people who don’t measure success solely by billable hours, but by whether they have genuinely improved someone’s situation.
Character matters alongside expertise
The legal profession has sometimes suffered from a reputation for being intimidating, inaccessible and even arrogant. Yet people seek the help of a solicitor at some of the most stressful moments of their lives, following a bereavement, during a divorce, after losing their job or when facing difficult decisions about their family or business. They don’t need arrogance. They need empathy backed by expertise.
That’s why culture matters so much. You can’t write a policy compelling someone to be compassionate. You can’t create a procedure that makes someone genuinely care about their local community.
The real test comes at a cost
The real test of an ethical culture comes when doing the right thing carries a commercial cost. In legal practice, that can mean advising a client to stop pursuing a case because the additional cost is likely to exceed what they could recover. Continuing might generate more fees, but it would not be in the client’s best interests.
Ethical cultures should also influence how businesses behave beyond the office. Supporting charities, schools and community organisations matters, but this type of activity should be the consequence of an organisation’s values rather than a substitute for them. A company cannot compensate for questionable behaviour towards its employees or customers by sponsoring a local event or publishing an impressive ESG report.
If you recruit people who genuinely care about others, they are more likely to identify opportunities to help colleagues, clients and local causes without needing to be instructed to do so. Increasingly, businesses are judged not just on what they sell, but on how they behave. Customers, clients and employees all want to know what an organisation stands for before they trust it. That’s entirely reasonable.
Culture is what happens when nobody is watching
The temptation is to answer that question by producing another policy or another statement of corporate values. I’d suggest a different starting point. Look around your organisation.
- Do your people naturally make ethical decisions when nobody is watching?
- Do they treat colleagues with respect?
- Do they own their mistakes?
- Do they genuinely want to improve the communities they serve?
If the answer is yes, then your ethics already exist. The paperwork simply records them. If the answer is no, paperwork alone will not solve the problem. Culture is not created by policies alone. It is created by the people an organisation recruits, the behaviour its leaders encourage and the decisions people make when nobody is watching.
Teresa Payne is group director of Parfitt Cresswell Solicitors, which has offices in London, Surrey, Berkshire, East Sussex and Kent. She is skilled in Legal Assistance, Legal Compliance, Business Development, Trusts and Dispute Resolution.
