Ethics Forum Should Give Gu A Boost

As the new school year begins at Gonzaga University, there’s almost as much talk about business ethics as the successful men’s basketball team.

OK, maybe not quite as much discussion about workplace standards of conduct as campus buzz about a third straight trip to the NCAA’s March Madness tournament.

But both GU programs - ethics and basketball - are trying to make a national impact.

And both lineups have stars: all-conference senior Casey Calvary at power forward vs. retired Gen. Colin Powell as keynote speaker at an ethics forum. Point guard floor leader Dan Dickau, who transferred from the University of Washington, and a leader for the new Gonzaga Institute of Ethics, J. Michael Stebbins, who came from the other Washington, Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center.

And both the basketball and ethics programs know how to execute a full-court press of activity.

The Executive Ethics Forum, Sept. 27-30 at The Coeur d’Alene Resort, features Powell, plus a top Securities and Exchange Commission official, an astronaut and a top speaker from Southwest Airlines. Local speakers include the Rev. Robert J. Spitzer, GU president, and Telect co-founder Judi Williams.

The forum hopes to draw 150 company chief executives and top managers from the Inland Northwest and far beyond. “We’re about halfway there,” said program coordinator Leonard Doohan, GU’s Graduate School dean.

Doohan read from the roster of blue chip firms already represented from near and far, and said the recruitment calls are continuing. He added: “We’re fine at this point. Part of what I’m doing is setting the scene and sewing the seeds for next year.” He also noted that some of the companies which will attend have not been involved with Gonzaga programs before.

Judi Williams said her company is happy to be a sponsor because ethical values have always been part of the corporate culture at Telect, the fast-growing Spokane Valley maker of network connection devices for communications systems.

“A lot of times, it (ethics) isn’t given its due,” she said. “It’s important to value ethical decision-making and practice it in whatever setting you happen to be in,” Williams added: “We know companies will have an influence on their work force, and we try to make it a positive one.”

She is “hopeful that this is the first of many executive forums on ethics which will draw people from around the world.”

Putting GU on the radar of top officers from a number of top companies no doubt will benefit the school in a variety of ways.

The forum should help launch the ethics institute, which has several goals:

* Initiate a program of “ethics across the curriculum.”

Stebbins, a 1977 GU grad, said he will work with faculty in every academic area to identify ethical issues and develop learning modules and resources to help guide ethical decision-making. Spitzer said every GU student will get some exposure to ethics values as part of their undergraduate program.

* Initiate continuing education programs in organizational ethics in major U.S. cities.

* Integrate the national program with GU’s current ethics efforts. Spitzer commended the Better Business Bureau and other business groups that are helping with the outreach to the community, especially to schools.

* Initiate an interactive Web site on principle-based ethics. Stebbins said there are “a ton of other ethics Web sites out there,” and he will avoid duplication of existing efforts by seeking a niche that distinguishes GU’s effort.

The institute received a major league boost with a $2.3 million gift from the Tilford family of Spokane, in honor of Charles A. Tilford, who died two years ago at age 85. The Wallace, Idaho, native was a 1934 GU graduate who returned to the Silver Valley to work for Hecla Mining Co. He later had numerous board directorships, including Hecla, Pacific Northwest Bell, Central Pre-Mix and Columbia Electric. Scholarships have been endowed in his name at GU and the University of Washington.

Prior to a reception Friday at GU honoring the family gift, son Thomas Tilford, a Spokane attorney and business owner, recalled that his dad was chairman of the GU Board of Regents when the son was a senior at GU.

Why endow an ethics institute? “Most children think their parents are paragons of ethics,” Tilford said, “but many people in the area thought that father was an absolutely straight-up guy.”

Why business ethics? “You get to be known by the way you perform,” Tilford said. “If you perform ethically, that’s known around town. And if you don’t perform ethically, that’s also known - and that will come back to bite you.”

Stebbins is not sure how long it will take for the ethics institute to make a national impact. An active Web site could provide some visibility soon.

Spitzer said no models for the institute exist in the West. “Partially, we will be inventing the wheel. About 65 percent will be new,” he said, and about 70 percent of the institute’s efforts will focus on business.

Right now, the Tilford gift notwithstanding, there may be more enthusiasm and ideas than resources. The staff consists of Stebbins and one assistant. “I have a desktop computer, but no furniture yet,” Stebbins said.

But the vision seems solid. Stebbins said the institute will not act as an arbiter of ethical disputes, but rather as a teacher of ethical values. “We will go beyond what you see in typical codes of ethics and challenge people to see what kind of ethical persons they are.”

He said another ethics area involves company rules and policies. “People may not have bad intentions, but policies can be set up the wrong way,” Stebbins said. He cited a Midwestern bank where “if you showed up late for work, they’d hammer you. So employees who knew they might be late just called in sick for the whole day instead. By changing the policy, they made it ethically easier to do the right thing,” Stebbins said.

Asked for examples of ethical lapses, Stebbins replied, “I’m not very impressed by Bridgestone/Firestone and Ford (slow to recall tires prone to tread separation) right now. There is the gross overcompensation of CEO’s in some companies. And the tobacco companies denying that nicotine is an addictive substance.

“But we want to get people to notice the less obvious and more pernicious ways things go on. We want people not to just think in terms of violations of the law - where we draw the lines and see how close you can get before you cross over - not the evils to avoid, but what good we can do,” he said.

Stebbins calls it “moving beyond the ethics of law and compliance to the ethics of achievement. Pushing ourselves to doing good.”

Spitzer said a special outreach will be made to small businesses, where staff, already stretched, may not have time to attend programs.

Two-hour ethics seminars will be designed for small groups. “This includes CPAs and lawyers, who may push the limit to get away for a few hours,” Spitzer said. He said some programs will be tailored for small business, where “there is no internal ethics officer, so they just rely on a lawyer’s advice or common sense.”

What’s the return on investment for a business increasing its awareness of ethical values? Spitzer cites three things:

“You can keep out of damaging things - damaging one’s reputation to customers and vendors and staff.

“You can build trust within the organization among employees and managers, even customers and vendors. If they think you’re a highly ethical person, they will increase their trust level, and that’s good for business.

“Third, if people are doing the right thing, they’re sleeping well at night. You can bring together the home life and business life. And why not? Most people want to do the right thing.”

As the programs evolve, area businesses may learn whether good ethics really is good business. And Gonzaga will learn whether its ambitious ethics initiatives are the right thing for it to do.