Moral muteness – enables disrespectful cultures to flourish - can we do better?

The emerging new cases of sexual harassment stories at AMP highlight the role of silence or ‘moral muteness’ that often prevails in organisational cultures where unethical behaviour goes unpunished and unreported, is tolerated by leaders and Boards. It is a deadly silence spawning a culture of both willing and unwilling complicity ensuring other victims of harassment or abuse stay silent or risk their careers and wellbeing.

Moral muteness occurs when we witness unethical behaviour and choose not to say or do anything. The same organisational power that enables executives to harness or victimise employees also causes other employees and peers to stay silent or silently vote with their feet. Behaviour science insights highlight how our conformity biases mean that we take our cues for appropriate behaviour from our peers instead of policies or personal judgments. The most significant social pressure in any organisation or Board is the pressure “to go along to get along.” Our ethical accountability can rise and fall depending on the ethical standards of the loudest voices or most influential members.

What is the ethics of non-disclosure agreements (NDA’s)? Too often they are designed to maintain this silence, to hide the unethical social life of the organisation rather than to protect any organisational IP. Isn’t it time we saw NDA’s as admissions of ethical failure; that risk managers see NDA’s as symptoms of conduct risk and respond appropriately? We know the business case has already been made that a good culture enhances business success. In contrast, the other side of the coin, that unethical cultures lead to the premature death or, at the very least their underperformance, continues to be ignored.

The AMP exposures should cause us all to reflect on just how many of us have seen bullying, harassment and unethical behaviours at work and failed to respond ethically, how we are still unskilled to take appropriate action. Leaders’ ethical duty of care to employees remains absent from scorecards. Are we doomed to moral muteness, or can behaviour science insights provide new ways to offset the inhibiting influences of executive power and status enabling victims' voices to be heard? 

Typically people report that they find it easier to refrain from doing wrong themselves than to intervene to stop others from harming. Behaviour science recommends we build on this predisposition; that we appeal to each organisational members’ identity as an ethical person and skill them in new techniques enabling them to protect each other and themselves. New insights and opportunities for skill development are promoting safer speak up strategies while we await the arrival of elusive speak-up cultures.

 What speak-up strategy can work without career implosion? What can we do to minimise our potential morally muteness in a situation that cries out for action? Again, the AMP case demonstrates the pitfalls of several biases and behaviours and how building organisational awareness of these can help prevent members from descending a slippery slope towards complicity. Behaviour insights such as:

• Our conformity bias predisposing us to change our beliefs, attitudes and behaviour choices to fit into our desired groups; how it enables unethical behaviour such as cheating to become contagious
• Our self-servicing bias helping us to evade personal responsibility while blaming others when things go wrong yet credit when they go right
• Our loyalty biases resulting in Boards being blindsided to rogue CEO’s even as the warning signs are flashing
• The power of our rationalisations enabling us to delude ourselves to our conflicts of interest
• The business case for zero tolerance for disrespectful behaviour because of the pitfalls of incrementalism where small infractions pave the way for significant bullying and conduct risk of all sorts

 Authentic ethics training involves helping organisational members better understand themselves as well as the influence of their organisation’s culture. Failing to consider both sources of risk, doom leaders to repeat the mistakes of the past. Cultural pressures such as those inherent in organisational euphemisms, for example, can effectively hide the ethical dimension of conduct risk. Euphemisms such as it's a judgement call or rightsizing or stretch goals effectively hide the ethical dimension of these actions.

 We can do better. Behaviour science is providing rich insights leaders can use to dismantle the barriers of moral muteness and enable more respectful cultures to flourish.