A Line in the Sand

Originally shared in A Daily Dose Of Leadership on July 25, 2020.

Let’s take a look at A Line in the Sand…through the last several blogs, we’ve looked at a few different scenarios where organizations made some very public statements about the future actions they would be taking to better serve their employees and their client base. The challenge in each of those scenarios was that people in high profile roles within those organizations were under tremendous public scrutiny for the exact thing the company’s were now taking action to prevent. And this so often causes us to ask are you sorry you did it or are you sorry you got caught?

I closed the last blog by suggesting that some organizations go so far as to set specific criteria regarding how much funding can be spent on questionable behavior, or even to suppliers that engage in less than above-board practices. Truth be told, I had never really given this much thought. If I don’t have a good feeling about someone’s ethics, I cut ties. That’s not always been easy, and I’ve caught some flack for doing it at times, but I don’t have any problems sleeping at night…

Just a few days ago, a friend of mine shared with me the difference between ethical investing and moral investing. (Please understand that I’m probably butchering the terms here, but it will serve a bigger point than investing…) He shared that many types of funds can be considered “ethical investments” as long as no more than 10% of their overall dollars are invested in areas such as sweat-shop and/or child labor, blood diamonds, organizations with ties to terrorism, child trafficking, or pornography, as well as several other similar things. He shared that for something to be considered a “moral investment” none of the funds could go to things like this. Further, a company had to have a five year track record of being “clean” according to these standards to even be considered as an “moral investment” option.

He went on to tell me that he had been in a few debates with the “ethical investment” firms where he asked how they set that 10% guideline. He asked them if that meant they believed that pornography was acceptable as long as it was for less than 2 hours a day, since that was after all less than 10%. He asked if he selling his eleventh child into sex trafficking would be OK since that was also less than 10%… 

From what I gathered, that was the last time that particular firm engaged in debate with him…

Again, I’m sure I’ve messed up a few of the details around what he shared. But here’s the point: what really is unacceptable behavior? And if it truly is unacceptable, can we really have a certain amount that’s allowed?

As we looked at the “Ethical Fading” that Simon Sinek discussed in The Infinite Game, I shared his statement that it’s “not an event. It doesn’t just suddenly arrive like a switch was flipped. It’s more like an infection that festers over time.” When we can stand firm on what we believe is and is not acceptable, we have a much better chance at avoiding situations where our organization has to issue statements on how we’ll be handling things after someone has made the front page, and we should never be in a scenario where we have to draw A Line in the Sand showing how much spending can be directed to questionable activities.

In closing, I’ll challenge you to think back to what we looked at a few weeks ago in this series regarding how important trust is in leadership. If we stand firm with our expectations and standards, there should never be a reason to even consider one of those lines in the sand and we can continue building a level of trust that leads to even stronger leadership!