Deflated Footballs and Minor Ethical Lapses

If a lapse of ethics can't be connected to the outcome, does it matter at all?

There has been an interesting meme accompanying the "deflategate" news about the New England Patriots possibly cheating in the AFC Championship game by using under-inflated (and therefore easier to grip and catch) footballs. The Patriots won the match against the Indianapolis Colts in a rout.

The score was 45-7.

It wasn't close.

The meme that is emerging on many commentaries on the situation goes something like this:

The Patriots still would have won, so anybody whining about cheating just doesn't get it.

Translated a different way: An ethical lapse that underlies a big win doesn't really matter if you can't draw a direct line to the win.

I won't pass judgment on the Patriots because the facts of the case are only just now trickling out. I suspect that there will be some grand repercussions if the current reports of 11/12ths of New England's game balls being artfully deflated are fully confirmed.

However...

The meme deserves some discussion.

Practical Pillars of Ethical Behavior

There are really only a few practical pillars of ethical behavior. Ethical behavior really is simple enough for a child to understand.

In the simplest form, the Golden Rule suffices.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

A slightly more in-depth examination (and I'm musing with an hour to write this, not attending a philosophy class) brings a few more things to mind:

• Informed Consent: Ensuring that the players at least know that it's a game where cheating is possible. In the NFL case: The Colts knew cheating was possible and complained about a similar issue in November after losing to the Patriots 42-20.

• Rule of Rules: When there is a social contract, a policy, a rule, or a law, it gets followed or changed. Enforcements and rule changes don't happen ex post. The NFL rules are quite precise as to what compliant football inflation is.

• Duty of Care: Leaders have a duty to uphold the same ethical and fiduciary standards that their leaders have. Senior leaders and boards rely on subordinates to uphold standards, not to secretly break them when it's advantageous. The head coach and others will receive stiff fines and likely suspensions if violations are proven...Not just the ballboy and equipment manager.

• Avoidance of Ignorance: The appearance of impropriety should be a motivation to know more, not less. Ignorance is not ethical bliss. Unfortunately, we already see some high profile Patriots glossing over the seriousness of the allegations. New England QB Tom Brady calls this burgeoning scandal the least of his worries and TE Rob Gronkowski made light of it with a joking tweet.

Note that I don't bring "fairness" and "equality" into the mix of ethics. Power and comparative advantage are real things.

Live with it.

What this essentially means is that process matters.

When to apply or not apply the pillars

With those things in mind, when is a minor or remote lapse of humane ethics ok? When does personal advantage trump the ethical duties outlined above?

Is it when the ethical slip is so small or far removed from the win that nobody can possibly link it to the win itself?

Is it when the actions are in secret? If contracts prevent others from talking about the ethical cracks that exist? If the people who know the truth are powerless or discredited?

When is it?

I'd argue that it's worth examining one's approach to life, profession, and leadership with these lenses; and working not only to be in alignment when them, but also in league with others whose ethics are similarly aligned.

Doing this examination, even (and especially) when in the midst of a big win is the mark of a humane leader.

But, why? Why not just take the win and shut up?

Why is it important to examine one's self even when winning big?

The first reason is this: When ethical lapses are buried under big wins as "irrelevant," they create cracks. Over time those cracks become holes you can drive a truck through. Those holes destroy lives, reputations, families, and organizations.

The Global Financial Crisis was allowed to reach its catastrophic crescendo because a profound number of "minor" ethical lapses in underwriting, rating, and personal financial standards were ignored in the fantastical run-up to the crisis.

Thousands of people knew that the lapses present would result in a crash. Greed being what it is for all of us, it was too costly to examine the realities and step off the machine.

The second reason is this: When suspected ethical lapses are ignored due to organizational distance, plausible deniability, or other comfortable but specious buffers, they form the same cracks as knowingly buried lapses.

A fantastic example of this is evident in the Bernard Madoff Ponzi Scheme. No, not because of the deplorable Ponzi scheme itself. The learning comes from the legions of people investing with Madoff. Many of them suspected that Madoff was doing something illegal or unethical. Some of those were warned outright by the likes of Harry Markopolos. However, they were far too comfortable with their clockwork-like 12 - 16% annual "investment" returns.

In the Madoff case, a cynic would say that the people benefiting from the scheme while it was running knew they were dealing with a crook. But, he was "their" crook. He was making "returns" for them that others couldn't access.

A slightly more generous take would be that while people suspected wrongdoing, they had no evidence of it, and so all was well.

Some might say that there is no such thing as a minor ethical lapse. I disagree. I think there are minor ethical lapses all the time--many of them unconscious or inadvertent.

Absolute standards are hard to find in the world.

The disaster comes when the minor lapses are allowed to survive, replicate, and grow.

Back to the Beginning

I've probably whipsawed between two very different standards of ethical care in this quick article: Deflated footballs to trillion dollar systemic disasters.

The key point of this article is that if a dominant meme can emerge in a day or two that excuses an alleged break of a fundamental rule because "the Patriots would have won anyway;" then it's worth stopping and examining whether that kind of thinking is pervasive in our own professional lives.

I'm not sure it's possible to treat all people with every possible connection to us with the same, conscious approach to humane ethics. There's always the next cause, care, or critique that will arise.

But, as Socrates said: The unexamined life is not worth living.

Geoff Wilson is a strategy executive focused on the articulation of practical strategic principles for leadership and performance. If you follow people on Twitter, you might consider following him: @GeoffTWilson

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