Vision Core · Responsibility · Module
Ethics
How people are expected to act where the law is silent or permissive — the conduct standards, the dilemmas already reasoned through, and the response when someone raises a concern.
The idea
How it works
Compliance answers what the organisation must do; ethics answers what it should do where it is legally free to choose. Paine’s distinction between compliance-based and integrity-based programmes is still a useful test: a programme that only prevents illegal acts leaves every lawful but harmful choice to individual judgement under pressure.
The hard cases are rarely right against wrong. They are right against right — loyalty to a customer against honesty with a regulator, a job saved against a promise kept. Standards alone do not settle these. What helps is a record of how similar dilemmas were reasoned through before, so that the next person facing one is not starting from nothing.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Derive the standards from the stated values
Each conduct standard should trace back to a value held under Purpose. A standard with no value behind it is a rule; a value with no standard is a slogan.
- 02
Write standards as situations
“Act with integrity” guides nobody. “Do not accept hospitality from a supplier during a tender” does.
- 03
Keep the dilemmas, not just the verdicts
The reasoning is what transfers to the next case. A bare outcome transfers nothing.
- 04
Measure the response, not the volume
A falling number of concerns raised can mean fewer problems or less trust. How concerns were handled is what tells the two apart.
One level in
The components of ethics
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Code of conduct
The conduct standards, written as situations, with the values each derives from and whom they apply to.
LearnDilemma casebook
Past ethical dilemmas, the options considered, the reasoning and the outcome — kept as precedent.
LearnSpeak-up response procedure
What happens after someone raises a conduct concern: acknowledgement, handling standard, protection from retaliation and feedback.
Learn
Where the law requires a reporting channel, its legal specification and controls belong in Compliance. What this module adds is whether raising a concern is worth doing.
The other modules in responsibility
Impact and materiality
Which of the organisation’s effects matter, judged outward by their weight on people and the environment and inward by their financial effect on the organisation.
LearnCommitments and targets
What the organisation commits to about its material impacts, measured from a recorded baseline, with milestones close enough to be missed and an owner who would notice.
LearnDisclosure
What the organisation states publicly about its sustainability impacts, commitments and progress, and the evidence standing behind each of those statements.
Learn