Teaching Ethics Archives | Ethical Systems

EY and KPMG Cheating Scandals Expose Ethical Challenges for Audit Industry

Blog, Cheating & Honesty, Compliance & Ethics Programs, Corporate Culture, Teaching Ethics

After getting caught ignoring its employees and cheating on the CPA ethics exam, EY has become the latest example of how industry and company-level mindsets can turn into corporate liabilities.

The Problem with Risk Assessments

Blog, Compliance & Ethics Programs, Corporate Culture, Teaching Ethics

Like most rituals in health and safety, John Soria's story shows us that risk assessments have become meaningless and misaligned with their purpose. Five years ago, two safety inspectors boarded a ship docked for repairs in Shanghai. It…

Against the “Value Alignment” of Future Artificial Intelligence

Blog, Speak-Up and Call-Out Culture, Teaching Ethics, Trust

What we should want, probably, is not that superintelligent AI align with our mixed-up, messy, and sometimes crappy values but instead that superintelligent AI have ethically good values. It's good that our children rebel. We wouldn't…

Disputes Over DEI Depend on How You Define Fairness

Blog, Corporate Culture, Fairness, Teaching Ethics

Each side views the other as favoring unfair practices, making civil discourse between them difficult. Decades after the 1960s civil rights movement, racial inequality persists. In an effort to reduce it, an explosion of diversity, equity,…

The Moral Identity of an Organization Hinges on Leadership and Affects Everyone

Blog, Corporate Culture, Leadership, Personality & Personnel, Teaching Ethics

Our offices—or our Slack channels and Zoom meetings—are increasingly a forum for contentious discussions about political and social issues, and what a company’s stance should be. One of the more interesting media shake-ups recently…

A Buddhist Philosopher’s Antidote to Modern Nihilism

Blog, Teaching Ethics

To care deeply, as Socrates shows us in Plato’s Apology, is to be willing to die for what is truly worth caring about. In mid-September 2020 as I write, massive wildfires are burning throughout Washington, Oregon, and California, and climate-change…