Having found it impossible to try to keep three separate blogs going, I have now consolidated all three of my my blogs in Christopher Bauer's Trust Foundry Blog. Thanks for having been a reader of Municipal Ethics News and Views and I hope you will subscribe to The Trust Foundry. Continue reading

Your support of the Ethics Nexus blog has been greatly appreciated and I hope that you will now follow my posts at The Trust Foundry. All prior posts to this blog can be found there as well. Continue reading

My appreciation for values statements that are both well written and well implemented grows and grows. Done right, they not only drive cultures of ethics but, in the same stroke, drive better management, leadership, and customer service. This really is 'silver bullet' stuff with the ability to provide a major uptick to every organization's functioning and bottom line. As I work with more and more organizations on the values statement development and implementation process, there are a number of problems I see time and time... Continue reading

Developing a culture of ethics, whether in the public sector or private, is exactly like any other plan - it needs to be formal, strategic, written and supported. You wouldn't, I hope, try to improve leadership or management or customer service in your local government simply by hoping that it will get better. Again, it takes a formal and fully supported plan. As a place to start in developing a plan, here are four of the essentials that I see missing most frequently where a plan actually exists: Continue reading

I speak all the time with executives and managers who tell me about their wish to develop a culture of ethics and values as well as the depth of their frustration in trying to do so. Far too many tell me that it just never seems to work for them. Generalizations are always a slippery slope but here's is what I find to be true in the overwhelming number of those cases - they have no real plan! So, as a place to start, here are four of the essentials that I see missing most frequently in the planning process where a plan actually exists: Continue reading

The court has now held that false promises of ethicality are not a legal shelter and I suspect we can all agree that any type of false promise is a defacto ethical violation as well. So, is your organization prepared to show that its ethics code represents a genuine, concerted, persistent, effective effort to develop and maintain a culture of ethics? Remember, you need to be able to demonstrate all four of those qualities and the need to be able to do so has always been an ethical mandate. Now, however, it appears as if it might be a legal mandate as well. Continue reading

The court has now held that false promises of ethicality are not a legal shelter and I suspect we can all agree that any type of false promise is a defacto ethical violation. So, are you prepared to show that your local government's ethics code represents a genuine, concerted, persistent, effective effort to develop and maintain a culture of ethics? Remember, you need to be able to demonstrate all four of those qualities; the need to be able to do so has always been an ethical mandate. Now it seems as if it might be a legal mandate for your government as well. Continue reading

In the rush to develop effective and enforceable social networking and social media policies, many organizations have written policies that are sensible on the surface but which are, in fact, both ethical and legal nightmares waiting to happen. Do you know whether or not yours pass either test? The line between protecting an organization's reputation and the employee's right to express their opinions and beliefs online is perhaps not a line at all but, rather, a continuum. How can you write a policy that protects appropriate free expression but still provides reputational protection for fellow employees and your organization as a whole? I think that the NLRB reports provide a number a thought-provoking ways to consider accomplishing that. Continue reading

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) had released its 2012 "Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse". As all ACFE studies, it is a trove of interesting and useful, if sometimes alarming, data. Among the many compelling findings found in their executive summary are the following: On average, survey participants estimated that typical organizations are losing approximately 5% of revenues each year to fraud and abuse. (This corresponds closely to the figure frequently cited for major corporations in the U.S. So, these findings suggest that this estimate is both worldwide and probably, in fact, unrelated to the size of the organization.) The median fraud loss in this sample was $140,000 but more than a fifth of the cases resulted in losses of greater than $1,000,000. (Here again, theses figures correspond relatively closely with domestic U.S. studies from the last several years.) Continue reading

Just a quick note to all you Kindle owners to let you know that the latest edition of my book "Better Ethics NOW: How To Avoid The Ethics Disaster You Never Saw Coming" has now been released for the Kindle and is available here on Amazon.com for only $9.99. (For those of you outside of the U.S. and Canada, it is available on all of the other Amazon international sites as well.) Should you download it it and like it - as I certainly hope you will - it would be terrific if you could leave a review for it on its Amazon page. Continue reading

I just ran across this brief article from the Bozeman, Montana Daily Chronicle in which the author rightfully is shocked that a recent study found only 7% of Montana's cities appear to have provided any kind of ethics training to their employees. Is that a horrible problem? Absolutely! The article goes on to describe a variety of employees' ethical issues noted recently. Here is what's far more disturbing to me, though. In many states, that level of ethics training - especially if it is, in fact, well-conceived and delivered - would be a huge step forward. There are many states where ethics training isn't provided to nearly that many folks or, in the alternative, is provided but is so minimal that the likely impact isn't much greater than if no training had been offered at all. Continue reading

The Ethics Resource Center recently released the results of their 2011 National Business Ethics Survey. Long term readers of this blog and my Weekly Ethics Thought will know that I am always impressed with their research methods and clarity of reporting. This year's study is no different in that regard. While, as always, I heartily recommend downloading a copy for closer personal review, here - with a little added editorializing - are the key points from their executive summary in the meantime: Continue reading

I'll be the first to admit that I'm prone to stating the obvious. Sometimes I apologize for it and sometimes I don't. Many times I don't even realize I've done it until thinking back on a comment later. Most of us have been told all of our lives that it's pretty poor form to speak the obvious. My goal is simply to stop apologizing for it. Here's why... Some of you may have seen the recent article about the woman in Seattle who used a city car, on city time, to drive to a casino - yes, indeed - en... Continue reading

As many of you have heard me speak about, there has - to my mind - been an alarming trend in recent years to narrow "public sector ethics" down to a small repetitive list of topics including undue influence, sunshine laws, recusal, and conflict of interest. Of course each of these is terribly important. However: 1.) These are, for the most part, really a matter of rules that can easily be read and reviewed by any official and employee at any time. So, why would you spend all of your training time and money on them? 2.) To the extent... Continue reading

So what exactly have we learned that can be applied to local governments to improve their ethics? Here, I believe, is precisely what we have learned - and it is exactly the same as what the private sector should have learned; nothing. Absolutely nothing. Really. If you have gleaned something new and enlightening, I do hope you will come forward and share it. In the meantime, sadly, all I think we may end up learning from Rupert and son is that - as has historically been the case so often - simply knowing what is right can be a startlingly poor predictor of doing what is right. (Especially when there is so very much to gain by stepping, even egregiously stepping, over the line.) Continue reading

The news world and blogosphere have been filled for the last couple of weeks with all of the revelations regarding Rupert Murdoch and the wild ethical transgressions by employees of News Corp. Along with these stories there have been loudly trumpeted all the valuable ethics lessons we are to have learned from this still-unfolding debacle. So what exactly have we learned? Here, I believe, is precisely what we have learned; nothing. Really. For all the lurid details and alarming oversteps, please tell me one new... Continue reading

As you've heard me say before, a well-developed and appropriately implemented values statement will not only go a long ways toward developing and maintaining a culture of ethics in your local government but will also do so much more. Done right - and it really does need to be done right - a values statement will drive better management, leadership, and customer service. Each of those will bring huge value to your local government. I-sight software just publishing two sets of excerpts from interviews they did with me on developing high impact values statements. Hopefully they can give you a... Continue reading

Thanks to i-sight software for publishing excerpts from two interviews they did with me on developing high impact values statements. As you've all heard me say before, a well-developed and appropriately implemented values statement will not only go a long ways toward developing and maintaining a culture of ethics but will also do so much more. Done right - and it really does need to be done right - a values statement will drive better management, leadership, customer service and branding. Interested? You can find... Continue reading

I am constantly asked for ethics-related vidoes and rarely have much to offer because so few are really very engaging. So, I was thrilled to have a friend point me in the direction of these three terrific student videos on ethics. These all came from a competition sponsored by the Center for the Public Trust and, if this year's winners are any indication, I'll look forward to seeing the new ones each and every year. Terrific pieces of student work on ethics, I thought. Congrats to these young videographers for a job well done! Continue reading

This story from ArgusLeader.com describes how there is a concern that counsilor Jim Entenman may be violating the city ethics code by virtue of owning land that could be used for city improvements while he sits on the council and an organization called BuildItDowntown. This does, indeed, sound like a conflict if, in fact, he participates in any way in the city's discussions on the purchase. However, isn't that why we have the option (or, ideally, the mandate) of recusal? Continue reading

I am constantly amazed and alarmed by how often I am asked if ethics training is really worthwhile. The argument I hear most often is that ethics are something we ought to have learned at home or in church or in school when we were all younger and, if the job hasn't been done by now, what's the use? This all stuns me for so many reasons and here are just a few of those reasons: 1.) 'Old dogs' do, indeed, learn new tricks. Give... Continue reading

With all the local government ethics issues we see day after day after day, it's always nice to see a story now and then about a city who really seems to get it. I just stumbled onto this piece from the Salt Lake City Tribune and greatly appreciate what it has to say. This clearly reflects a local government who not only understands what should and should not be done but also understands that appearances matter a lot. Their actions speak to both parts of that equation. Bravo! Does their clear and flrm stance on conflict of interest or accepting... Continue reading

Just ran across this piece on Tacoma mayor Marilyn Strickland who seems to feel that a gift of $3251 worth of frequent flier miles did not violate the city ethics code's limit of $50 on gifts for a matter related to the city government. Her argument? That the trip was for city business and she did not derive any personal benefit from it. To the casual observer (as I admittedly am at this point, not having yet researched this matter more deeply), there appear to be two significant flaws in mayor Strickland's logic: It appears that the provider of the... Continue reading