Successful businesses need to practice integrity, not business ethics. These terms interchangeably, but they mean substantially different things for your business and company culture:
Ethics - a set of moral principles that govern how you do business.
Integrity - adherence to a strict set of moral values.
Based upon my experience with over 20 startups, corporations, and mid sized businesses, I think we as the business community should talk more about business integrity and less about business ethics. Ethics is the bare minimum of what should be done, but integrity is about conveying the truth. Focusing on principles or rules leads people to find ways around a rule instead of making sure that the truth is accurately portrayed.
You can think about the difference in ethics vs integrity as “did we lie” vs “did we tell the truth”. This seems like a small distinction, but I’ve found that when your company focuses on avoiding a lie then vital information is withheld or misconstrued, which leads to confusion, misunderstanding, and ultimately bad decisions.
Some examples I’ve seen:
Salespeople presenting system capabilities that don’t exist and are not achievable in the presented timelines.
Recruiters presenting rosy job descriptions and company cultures that do not match actual employee experiences.
Executives generating revenue projections that are wholly disconnected from product and engineering estimates.
Engineers pushing the latest tech stack or programming language as the solution to all problems with the product or timeline.
This problem is not limited to traditional sales roles. Engineers can fall into this behavior as well. For example, I worked with one company where the engineering lead decided that a particular product would be a great way to adopt new technology into the company. Non-technical executive leadership was not in a position to evaluate the technology choices, but they probably would have made a different decision if they had access to all the facts.
Look at the difference in how the same facts are presented:
Statement 1: “This new technology will allow our engineers to deliver this complex system in less time with fewer bugs. The industry is moving in this direction and we don’t want to be left behind.”
Statement 2: “Using this new technology could deliver the project in less time with fewer bugs. The downside is that very few of our employees know how to use it and it will takes months to achieve the same level of mastery that we have today with older technology.”
Technically, neither of these statements is a lie. However, Statement 1 is highly misleading for an executive or investor who wants to make a decision taking into account many factors. This executive or investor may not even know the right questions to ask to get at the information in Statement 2. If you do know that information is missing, you will not know to ask for it.
With the information in the second statement, even a non-technical executive can more effectively weigh the risks associated with implementing new technology. If the company has set a value of speaking truth and communicating so that others with different skillsets can understand the whole picture. If only a principle of conveying information is set as a standard, then extra time and care must be taken to find the holes.
When I work with people as a consultant or advisor, I promise to tell the truth, no matter how inconvenient this might be. If I am not the right person for an engagement, I will tell you and help find someone who is a better fit. I don’t gain anything by misleading you and ruining my reputation, and you cannot make a smart decision if you do not have all the information you need.