Some have called Edward Snowden a hero, others believe he is a criminal.  

Mr. Snowden is the 29 year old fugitive who, for reasons that are hard to comprehend, leaked to the UK daily The Guardian confidential information about two major U.S. government surveillance programs.  He was working for Booz Hamilton who had a contractual relationship with the National Security Agency until he was fired for “for violations of the firm’s code of ethics and firm policy.”

The fact that he broke the law is not contested by anyone.

Jeffrey Toobin the attorney, author and legal analyst for both CNN and the New Yorker, in his article “Edward Snowden Is No Hero,” published in this week’s New Yorker sums it quite well when he writes:

“The American government and its democracy are flawed institutions. But our system offers legal options to disgruntled government employees and contractors. They can take advantage of federal whistle-blower laws; they can bring their complaints to Congress; they can try to protest within the institutions where they work. But Snowden did none of this. Instead, in an act that speaks more to his ego than his conscience, he threw the secrets he knew up in the air-and trusted, somehow, that good would come of it. We all now have to hope that he’s right.”

One of the ethical issues here is a conflict of two legitimate values, privacy versus security. 

There should be a healthy debate or tension in any democracy between those concepts. How much of our privacy are we willing to sacrifice for our safety?

We have to avoid going to either extreme.

If we decide to completely give up our privacy in order to be safe we may end up losing both our privacy and our safety. We will risk ending up with a “J” on our passports (should we be Jewish) or any other letter that would signify that, for ethnic or ideological reasons, we have become the “enemy of the State.”

On the other hand, we do not want to be the laughing stock of our enemies enabling them to take advantage of our civil liberties to hurt us and those we love. 

 We need to find a compromise that we can live with. That compromise can best be found in a healthy debate about the true and practical meaning of freedom, privacy and security in the society we have decided to live in.

However, in the search for that compromise, we should take heed to syndicated radio talk show host and author Dennis Praeger’s warning:

“Compromise, while at times morally necessary or at least justifiable, is more often only the first permission for a person (or society) to begin a long downhill descent.”

Last month, the IRS revealed that it had used “inappropriate criteria” in evaluating the tax exempt status of right-wing political organizations. That revelation provoked a strong protest both in the political world and in the public. Consequently Steve Miller the acting IRS Commissioner was asked to resign and Joseph Grant the commissioner for the tax exempt division is retiring today. Furthermore, U.S. Attorney Eric Holder has instructed the FBI to conduct a criminal investigation of the matter and Congress is holding hearings on what happened.

The U.S. Constitution protects individuals and organizations from negative government intervention based political ideas or affiliations.

However it should be noted that, to my knowledge, no actions were taken against those organizations. The IRS was merely making sure that these organizations were abiding by the law. No tax exempt status was denied nor cancelled following the investigation by the IRS. The real issue was the politically motivated targeting or profiling. Although the IRS has limited resources it has to be impartial in its decision has to who it investigates.

Michael Macleod-Ball, chief of staff at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, said: “Even the appearance of playing partisan politics with the tax code is about as constitutionally troubling as it gets… there must be clear checks in place to prevent this from ever happening again.”

It is the very nature of government, any government, to attempt to increase control over the governed. We, who are privileged to live in a democracy and under the rule of law, should always remain vigilant to defend our democratic values and oppose any abuse of power. 

On a more individual level we should also remain aware that we personally and sometimes corporately possess powers that can negatively influence the lives of others. That applies to any of us who is in a position of authority or influence, whether in a family setting, at work or in society in general.

The ethical question for us is how can we make sure that we do not abuse that power?

The concept of abuse implies limits or lines not to cross. What are the limits? How can we determine if an action we are considering taking is in fact an abuse of power? What are the values that we need to adhere to that will prevent us from the risk of being abusive?

The first one that comes to my mind, of course, is respect.  Respect signifies not interacting with people as a mere means but ends in themselves. If we truly respect someone we will not take an action that would withhold information and/or infringe on that person freedom of choice.

The German philosopher Emmanuel Kant once wrote:

In law a man is guilty when he violates the rights of others.

In ethics he is guilty if he only thinks of doing so.

Maybe some at the IRS were just thinking along those lines!

It is almost impossible to imagine what happened to one young woman, Michelle Knight, and two teenage girls, Gina DeJesus and Amanda Berry who had been kidnapped and imprisoned for close to 10 years under indescribable conditions that included rape, beatings, and starvation, not to mention the despair and other psychological trauma imposed on them by the “alleged” perpetrator, Ariel Castro, owner of the house of horror.

Those events are and should be truly shocking.

It is very hard to believe that during all those years not one person noticed something wrong and reported it. There were some clues. In the May 7, 2013 New York Times article, Before Escape, Fleeting Clues to Long Ordeal, the authors write: “one neighbor remembered occasional late-night deliveries of groceries to the boarded-up shoe box of a house in a rough-edge West Side neighborhood here. “Another noticed a porch light that burned at night, even though many of the windows were covered.” Still another said his sister had once seen a figure in an upstairs window, pounding on the glass.” If any of those witnesses had reported any of this, the ordeal for those women would have ended a lot sooner.

Finally on May 6, 2013 a neighbor, Angel Cordero, heard screams coming from the house but was unable to understand what was being said since he did not speak English. Right then another neighbor appeared on the scene and together they made a hole in the front door allowing one of the women to crawl out with her baby girl, born in captivity and conceived by rape. They all rushed to a neighbor’s house; Amanda called 911 and said:

“Help me, I am Amanda Berry,

I have been kidnapped and I have been missing for 10 years, and I am here, I am free now.”

She was afraid that the “alleged” perpetrator would return to the house and lock her up again. When the police arrived they stormed the house, discovered the two other victims.

The statistics of abuse in this country and others are staggering.

According to Safe Horizon

• Four children die every day in the United States as a result of child abuse and neglect

According to RAINN (Rape, Abuse I Incest National Network):

• Each year there are approximately 208,000 victims of sexual assaults
• 54% of those assaults are not reported to police
• 2/3 of assaults are committed by someone known to the victims

According to National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, there are approximately

• 800,000 reported missing children each year.

Dr. Frank Ochberg, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Michigan State University and former associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health and an expert on trauma, said in an interview with Ray Suarez of NPR, “We pay much attention to a case like this because it’s unusual. It involves children being taken out of their home. But Ray, and the people who are listening, there are millions of children who are living in their homes, and they are subjected to repeated rape in their home. We have an incest story that is staggering. And we don’t like to look at it. But, when I saw this case, I thought, oh my goodness, a lot of my patients are going to be watching and they are going to be saying, that’s me. That’s what happened to me and it happened on my own home.”

Why is it that we are so reluctant to intervene or simply report when we suspect abuse? Is it just the selfish reason of not getting involved because of the short disruption it might cause in our lives? Is it because of fear of possible retaliation? We do not need proof that a crime has been (or is being) committed, just a suspicion obligates us morally and sometimes legally to report it.

Every state has a department of Social Services and will treat our call confidentially. If we do not have that number handy, we can always call 911!

We are all called to rescue. Wouldn’t we want to be the ones to hear the words Michelle Knight pronounced as she jumped into the police officer’s arms:

“You saved me, you saved me!”

?

Once again we were attacked by alleged Islamic extremists in Boston at the Marathon. The end result, 4 dead and more than 200 wounded some of them very seriously. Upon hearing the news most of us went through different phases of emotional reactions perhaps following Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ 5 stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance as described in her book “On Death and Dying.”

The overwhelming feeling in such an attack is probably anger. Feelings of anger and a need for vengeance following such a cruel and horrific criminal act are totally legitimate. They attest to our deeper sense of justice. Our system of justice and rule of law does provide some relief in our search for  just retribution.

The most important ethical question one can ask himself or herself when such event strikes is whether there was anything we could have done to prevent it, and what could we do in the future to prevent it.

To answer those questions we need first of all to try to understand what happened and why. 

Pulitzer Prize winning author and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, from Boston, told NBC Meet the Press that when news came that the authorities had captured one of the alleged perpetrator, alive, people in the bar she happened to be in cheered, saying “Thank God we got him alive” because they want the answer to the question why?”

Will we ever know? Can there ever be an explanation let alone a justification for an evil act of pure hatred?

Frank Bruni last Sunday’s New York Times Op-ed The Lesson of Boston: “But the difference between the aimless, alienated young men who do not plant bombs or open fire on unsuspecting crowds - which is the vast majority of them- and those who do is less likely to be some discrete radicalization process that we can diagram and eradicate than a dose, sometimes a heavy one, of pure madness. And there is no easy antidote to that. No amulet against it.”

Attributing such event merely to madness seems to me to be too easy.

Although we still have to learn much about the alleged perpetrators and their actions I believe we know for a fact now that both brothers had been somehow radicalized by Islamic extremism.

Thomas Friedman also in last Sunday New York Times asks two very important questions in his Op-ed Judgment Not Included. Speaking of the fact that many Muslim youth are angered by U.S. intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, he asks: “But what in God’s name does that have to do with planting a bomb at the Boston Marathon and blowing up innocent people? It is amazing to me how we have come to accept this non sequitur and how easily we have allowed radical Muslim groups and their apologists to get away with it.” He then writes: “But we must ask a question only a Muslim can answer: What is going on in your community that a critical number of your youth believes that every American military action in the Middle East is intolerable and justifies a violent response, and everything Muslim extremists do to other Muslims is ignorable and calls for mostly silence?”

How should we then react to terror in an ethical manner?

George Clifford an Episcopal priest and former Navy chaplain thinking of the “cardinal virtues of a just counterterrorism model” makes the point on his blog that terrorists win when we react as they expect us to. In other words, that our reactions, in the final analysis, cost us greatly more in human and financial loss than the initial attack. He believes that: “a community that exhibits courage (i.e. refuses to be terrorized), prudence (adopts proven affordable defensive measures), justice (insists on upholding the rule of law in its counterterrorism efforts), temperance (e.g. refusing demands for immediate revenge) not only refuses to cede victory to terrorists but also turns apparent defeat into victory.”  

He may be right.

France has been rocked with two major ethics scandals in the past few weeks.  At the center of the two unrelated scandals are two men, Jerome Cahuzac and Gilles Bernheim.

Both men had brilliant careers. Mr. Cahuzac was a surgeon and a member of the French parliament before he became Minister of the Budget. Mr. Bernheim, a respected author and former rabbi of the main synagogue in Paris, before he became the Chief Rabbi in France. (For transparency purposes, I had the pleasure of meeting Rabbi Bernheim in our home in Switzerland, many years ago.)

Mr. Cahuzac admitted, after first categorically denying it publicly, that he had a bank account in Switzerland (which is illegal according to French law) for the purpose of evading taxes (which is illegal in any country.)  The French President, Francois Holland, went on national television to apologize to the French people for the actions of his former minister.

Mr. Bernheim publicly admitted that two of his books contained a few instances of plagiarism and that he had not been totally honest about some of his academic credentials.

Both men were forced to resign from their positions of high authority because of these ethical lapses.

How very sad.

What seems to have most shocked the French media and public is the fact that the protagonists of these two scandals lied. The French daily, Le Parisien, called both the rabbi and the minister “super liars.”

Lying in essence is unethical. The deliberate intention to deceive is in most cases unacceptable yet it is a too common practice.

Tim Mazur of the Ethics & Compliance Officer Association (ECOA) write in his article Lying that: “Lies are morally wrong, then, for two reasons. First, lying corrupts the most important quality of my being human: my ability to make free, rational choices. Each lie I tell contradicts the part of me that gives me moral worth. Second, my lies rob others of their freedom to choose rationally. When my lie leads people to decide other than they would had they known the truth, I have harmed their human dignity and autonomy.”

Yet, telling the truth is not always easy.

David Finn in his article, Why We Lie says: “The truth is that untruths are told for different reasons. Sometimes the truth is too painful to tell, and we tell untruths to protect ourselves. Sometimes we tell untruths to deceive others. And sometimes, when we are under pressure, we rationalize what we know is not true and persuade ourselves that it is true.”

We should remember the quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne in The Scarlet Letter that says:

“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.”

Nike’s new advertising campaign featuring Tiger Woods provoked strong reactions both in the media and the public. The slogan of the campaign “Winning takes care of everything” is considered by many at best as inappropriate and at worst as a snub towards past critics who deplored his  many extra-marital affairs that brought him both shame and the end of his marriage.  

Some defended both Nike and Tiger Woods.  Michael Martinez in his CNN article entitled Can winning really take care of everything in Tiger Woods’ troubled life? wrote that the slogan “refers to how Woods has motivated himself to become a top golfer again.” In the same article, Melinda Travis, CEO of Pro Sports Communications is quoted, asking a pertinent question: “Does it erase what he’s done? No. But when is it enough? It is easy to criticize from afar, but when you sit across from someone who’s experienced public humiliation and a fall from grace and, in Tiger’s case, a breakup of an entire family and a permanent change in the way people view him, that’s a pretty high price to pay.”

The famous quote “winning isn’t everything, it is the only thing” has been attributed to the sports legend Vince Lombardi. Few people know that he regretted his comment. According to Michael Austin, author of the column Ethics Anyone  published by Psychology Today, Vince, towards the end of his life, said:  “I wished I’d never said the thing…I meant the effort. I meant having a goal. I sure didn’t mean for people to crush human values and morality.”

The quote from Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the French educator and founder of the International Olympic Committee, considered the father of the modern Olympic games when he said: “The important thing in life is not the triumph but the struggle, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well” is maybe more appropriate to Tiger Woods than the Vince Lombardi quote.

One of the ethical issues here is whether we can totally separate the private and the public lives of individuals.

Charles McGrath, in his New York Times great article entitled Good Art, Bad People writes that: “people who think and behave in ways most of us find abhorrent, make good art all the time.” He gives the example of Richard Wagner’s who was according to many a great composer, yet he had strong Nazi sympathies and connections and of Ernest Hemingway “whose domestic record is less inspiring that his artistic one: Four marriages and at least two screwed-up sons.”   

Can we admire someone’s accomplishments while at the same time deplore that person’s behavior?  We should approach this question with cautious humility because none of us is perfect and we have all (and most likely will) experience failure, sometimes miserably.

In recognizing  accomplishments and artistic expressions, I find it hard to simply ignore egregious behavior that violates universal and basic moral principles.

The author Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote that:

“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.”

The goal would then be to make sure that all three live in reasonable harmony.

Mayor Bloomberg’s ban on the sale of super size soft drinks was reversed last week by NY State Court. The court determined that the Mayor did not have the authority to impose such as ban. The Mayor is appealing that decision. This controversy brings to the forefront a discussion on how much power the government should be given by the people, assuming we live in a democracy. Governments by their very nature have a tendency to increase their power and control over citizens. Yet, without some form of government and authority, society would plunge into anarchy and chaos would follow.

In the dream world of the ultra conservative, we do not need government except maybe for the military, law enforcement and the courts. Good-bye FAA, FDA and EPA; let airplanes collide, medicine kill and air poison. 

The ideal for the extreme left would be ever-increasing government intervention in our lives to resolve national and global problems that individuals and corporations cannot handle by themselves. In that dream (or should I say nightmare) the government would decide what we eat and how much, what we wear (or not) and most likely how we worship God or rather make sure we don’t.

Obesity has become an epidemic. In NYC, 5,000 people will die this year alone of medical condition cause by over eating. According to Dr. Thomas Farley, the New York City Health Commissioner, $2.8 billion a year is spent on government health programs in care for obesity-related diseases. 

It has been estimated that 1/3 of the population in the U.S. is obese. While historically obesity was a disease of the rich, it has now become a disease of the poor because of lack of proper education on healthy eating habits and because fast food is cheap. On a global perspective, today, according to Mayor Bloomberg, there are more people dying of obesity than there are people dying of hunger.

Michael Mudd, a former senior executive in the food industry writes in his March 16, 2013 New York Times OpEd entitled How to Force Ethics on the Food Industry believes that the industry should stop “enticing people to consume more and more high-margin, low-nutrition branded products.” He says that the excuse of “we give people what they want” in many ways similar to the excuses given by the tobacco industry is not credible.    

I would think that with a public health problem of that dimension, government intervention would be welcomed. We seem to all agree that the sale and consumption of drugs such as cocaine and heroin should be illegal.  Why not welcome a very minor restriction on the size of sugar-filled drinks that can be sold.  No one has proposed limiting the quantity someone can buy. The ban would merely be creating a minor obstacle to consuming an excessive amount of sugar. (It would be somehow awkward to handle two cups of a soft drink instead of one big one.)

We can also look at this issue as one of finding the right balance between freedom and responsibility. How much of our individual freedom are we willing to give up to save other people’s lives?

Patrick Henry once said “Give me liberty or give me death.” On this issue I am afraid that those who oppose government intervention on excessive sugar consumption are really saying:  “Give me liberty AND give me death.”

The decision by Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer to disallow her employees from working from home caused quite a stir in the media. She seems to be going against a growing trend in corporate America. According to Telework ResearchNetwork.com, Telecommuting grew by 73% between 2005 and 2011 which represents a yearly growth of 10%.  More than 3 million Americans or 4% of the workforce telecommuted in 2011. Many major corporations allow commuting. According to CNN MONEY, more than 50% of Cisco’s, Accenture and Pricewaterhouse Coopers telecommute. In 2010, 6 % of the workforce was working exclusively from home.

There are pros and cons to working from home.

On the positive side, telecommuting saves time that is otherwise spent on commuting. It also saves money, the cost of travel and maybe of parking. Both of these advantages are for the benefit of the employee. For the employer, telecommuting can save some “real estate” cost. Some studies have shown that it also increases productivity that is to the benefit of both the employer and the employees. 

The potentially negative aspect of working from home is the loss of interaction among colleagues which could hinder creativity and innovation.

The issue of working from home is of particular interest in the Public Relation since it is a “women driven” industry and many women in PR are also mothers at home with young children who require, or should I say “demand” attention and care. Brittaney Kiefer, of PR Week writes in her article entitled Can Agencies Balance Telecommuting, (and) Collaboration? that her research established that senior level female executives believe that “flexible working schedule was crucial to achieving balance between career and family life.”

There are some ethical aspects to telecommuting.   Let me list three:

 1. It reduces carbon footprint for the benefit of all.

 2. It decreases employee misconduct. The Ethisphere Institute and Jones Lang LaSalle, a real estate service firm, surveyed more than 200 companies of different sizes and industries on telecommuting. The results of the survey clearly established that working from home reduced the frequency of ethical lapses. Patricia Roberts of Jones Lang LaSalle says: “Work from home strategies can remove the temptation of misconduct given the employee is generally more removed from common misconduct opportunities.

 3. Working from home can also represent a risk of dishonesty unless the employee is well disciplined and organized. Former Ruder Finn colleague, Bruce Weinstein, the “Ethics Guy” and CNN contributor writes in his article How to solve work-at-home ethical dilemmas that because of the multiple distractions in a home setting the telecommuter should be very careful not to waste time for which he or she is paid by the employer. He writes “Goofing off is not just unproductive: It’s unethical. It’s a form of theft since we’re taking time away from the work we’re being paid to do.”

 Working from home from an ethical perspective is a question of integrity, typical situation of doing the right thing when no one is watching.

Chinua Achebe once wrote:

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.“

On February 19, 2013, Jesse Jackson Jr. former Democratic representative from Illinois pleaded guilty to fraud in the illegal use of $750,000 of campaign funds over a period of 4 years. His wife, Sandi, pleaded guilty as well to making false income statements. Sentencing is scheduled for June 28 and July 1^st for Mr. and Mrs. Jackson respectively. They will both be facing jail time.

Mr. Jackson was considered by many as one of the most prominent and promising young black politicians   in the country. He was, by most accounts, a very good congressman involved with healthcare and education issues for the poor in his district. It is hard to fathom someone giving up his career and reputation for, in comparison, so little.

Mr. Jackson told the judge; “I used money I shouldn’t have used for personal purposes, I am guilty your honor, I misled the American people.”

It is inspiring to hear someone basically saying: “I did it and I am responsible.” Some will argue that he did not have much of a choice but to plead guilty. However we do not know that for a fact and I would rather think that his public admission of guilt may have come from a sense of doing what is right after having done what was unethical and illegal.

It is always very hard to admit wrongdoing on an individual level because it is humiliating and makes us vulnerable to criticism. Furthermore, admitting error is sometimes seen as a sign of weakness. Sandra Lozes expressed her views on why it is difficult to admit wrongdoing on TED Conversations: She wrote:

“Personally, to admit my mistakes and offer apologies is a gift I can give myself as well as to the person on the receiving end. We are all better off with a bit of humility and self reflection, and in the end it is these characteristics that allow us to let go of fear and defensive nature and be our authentic selves.”

For corporations and institutions, admitting error is a particularly difficult challenge. Kathryn Schultz, author of Being Wrong writes that “As a culture, we haven’t mastered the basic skill of saying ‘I was wrong.’ This is a starling deficiency, given the simplicity of the phrase, the ubiquity of error, and the tremendous public service that acknowledging it could provide.”

Doug Guthrie of George Washington University School of Business and Sudhir Venkatesh  from Columbia University in their article “Creative Leadership: Humility and Being Wrong published by Forbes wrote:

“What is profoundly powerful about embracing humility and publicly acknowledging errors is the link between authenticity and the success of the individual and the organization.”

There is a French proverb that says: “Error confessed - half forgiven.”  Recognizing our errors is the first step to “redemption.” Accepting responsibility for our wrongdoing can lead to the long process of rebuilding trust.

As the musician Dale Turner once said:

“It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them.”

Last week’s decision by Pope Benedict XVI to resign from the Papacy was a real shocker for Catholics and non-Catholics alike.  One would have to go back more than 600 years to find another Pope resign (for different reasons.)

Jack Marshal the ethics columnist (Ethics Alarms) called him an ethics hero because he acted according to the best interest of the institution he served, recognizing that his health no longer allowed him to meet his obligations.  Mr. Marshall says that it took Pope Benedict “courage, humility and selflessness as surrendering great power always does.” Jack wishfully thinks that maybe his example will encourage other ailing men and women in power including members of Congress to do “a Benedict’ and resign in time for the benefit of all.

Jill Martin Wrenn of CNN in her article From pope to politician, when do you know it’s time to go? writes that: “Choosing to step down from a top job can be an extraordinary decision, whether the person is a pontiff or a politician. She added that: “regardless of an employee’s years of loyalty and service, the final stretch is often what defines the person.” 

Deciding when to relinquish power or a position that yields power can be quite difficult because of selfish and egotistical reasons. We never seem to be willing to give up what we have “earned,” sometimes at a high cost.

However if we believe that we are no longer able to fulfill our responsibilities in the position we are in, we owe it to those we lead and our stakeholders to resign. We have a moral obligation to pass on the reign because ultimately what really matters is not whose name is on the captain’s door but whether the ship reaches its destination.

As Herman Hesse once wrote:

“Some of us think that holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.”