How ethical do you think you are?

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on September 10, 2007  
Filed Under Leadership

Why do we imagine we will be honest with clients, colleagues, and prospective employers, but when we are presented with the situation, we make misleading statements to them? We know we should behave ethically when negotiating with our client, but our desire to close the sale causes us to make misleading statements. In other words, why do we believe we will behave one way and then behave differently? And why do we justify these behaviours when reflecting on them after the fact?

The authors of a working paper, Why We Aren’t as Ethical as We Think We Are: A Temporal Explanation, published recently by Harvard Business School, propose the want/should distinction to describe conflicts that exist within the human mind during decision making. The want self is reflected in choices that are emotional, affective, impulsive and hot-headed. In contrast, the should self is characterised as rational, cognitive, thoughtful and cool-headed.

If left to its own devices, the want self would always act on immediate desires (e.g., spending instead of saving money, eating junk food instead of health food). If left to its own devices, the should self would always act on behalf of an individual’s long-term best interests (e.g., saving money or donating it to a good cause instead of spending frivolously, eating health food instead of junk food).

The want self is argued to emerge at or near the time a decision is made and enacted and to recede before and after the decision is made. When you make impossible assurances to a client or lie that you have other job offers, your want self is at the forefront.

The should self is present prior to the decision or after the behaviour has been enacted, when we typically conclude that we will (or did) tell the truth. People are more likely to make should choices – such as donating to charity, supporting an increase in the price of fish to reduce over-harvesting of the ocean’s fisheries, and supporting an increase in the price of fossil fuel to reduce consumption – if the action will be implemented in the future rather than in present.

People commonly predict that they will behave more ethically in the future than they actually do. When evaluating past (un)ethical behaviour, they also believe they behaved more ethically than they actually did. Improving our ethical behaviour thus requires us to direct our attention toward aligning our want and should selves.

Lest you think all this is a bit theoretical and esoteric, the extent of corporate scandals this decade should remind you of the importance of ethical decision making. Corporations are eager to understand why those scandals happened and how to prevent them from reoccurring.

This paper brings the psychological processes of the individual decision-maker to the forefront by examining the self-deception that is inherent in the beliefs about one’s own (un)ethical behaviour. Leaders deceive themselves that they are ethical people and the continuation of this belief allows for the perpetuity of unethical behaviour.


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