MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Ethics as Conversation - A Process for Progress

Most organizations can agree on what questions to consider before making a decision about marketing, finance, or operations. But many stumble when the issue at hand has ethical outcomes.

One former CEO of a large financial services company put it this way in a recent conversation: “By the time the issue gets to me, it’s been analyzed, scrubbed, and PowerPointed to where I don’t have much idea what really might have happened. But I still have to make a decision that has ethical consequences.” He said this meant he had to be confident that people in his organization had posed roughly the same questions he would ask. He wasn’t so sure that was the case.

We began to use this insight in our conversations with executives and students. We ask them to define what we call “your ethics framework.” Practically, this means defining what set of questions you want to be sure you ask when confronted with a decision or issue that has ethical implications.

About the Author

R. Edward Freeman is a professor of strategy, ethics, and entrepreneurship at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. He tweets @re_freeman. Bidhan (Bobby) L. Parmar is an associate professor at the Darden School.

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