The world's largest toy company Mattel recently announced that it was recalling 19 millions toys sent from China. It is the largest recall in its history. The toys were found to have lead tainted paint. The recall could cost the company as much as 30 million dollars.

The Chairman and CEO did the right thing in his decision to recall and he did it immediately. He also went public and was honest when asked if this was the last recall. He answered "I can't promise, no system is perfect and we want be shy about future recalls, if necessary."

Who is to blame for this disaster? Manufacturers? Contractors, and sub contractors? The quality control inspectors? We don't know yet but most likely we will find that more than one party will be found responsible.

Professor Prakash S. Sethi, former ethics advisor at Ruder Finn and now professor at Baruch College, has been an advisor to Mattel for many years on working conditions in Mattel's factories. He says: "everyone is going to be found with lots of dirty laundry." He adds: "there is something to be said about the pressure that American and European and multinational companies that put on Chinese companies to supply cheap products. The operating margins are razor thin, so you really should not be surprised that there is pressure to cut corners."

Accidents don't happen in a vacuum. In any investigation and analysis of a catastrophe, we most often discover that the disaster resulted from an unfortunate chain of multiple errors. These errors are often the result of wrong decisions. Robert E. Mettelstaedt. Jr. in his book "How to Avoid Catastrophe in Your Business" makes the point that all disasters, such as Enron, the Titanic and Firestone Tire, have in common a string of mistakes, also called the Mistake Chain that lead to the catastrophe.

A catastrophe, can, very often be prevented if at any point in the chain of events, someone makes the correct decision. Ethics is very often about making the right decisions in a given situation.

We may sometimes feel that we are just a small gog in a wheel and mistakenly believe that our decisions, because of how small they appear to be, don't count in the overall picture. We should never underestimate the impact of the decisions we make and our responsibility.

As William McFee once wrote:
Responsibility is like a string we can only see the middle of. Both ends are out of sight.