Time for Morrison’s ‘quiet Australians’ to roar
The Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has attributed his electoral success to the influence of ‘Quiet Australians’.
It is an evocative term that pitches somewhere between that of the ‘silent majority’ and Sir Robert Menzies’ concept of the ‘Forgotten People’. Unfortunately, I think that the phrase will have a limited shelf-life because increasing numbers of Australians are sick of being quiet and unobserved.
In the course of the last federal election, I listened to three mayors being interviewed about the political mood of their rural and regional electorates. They said people would vote to ensure that their electorates became ‘marginal’. Despite their political differences, they were unanimous in their belief that this was the only way to be noticed. They are the cool tip of a volcano of discontent.
Quiet or invisible?
Put simply, I think that most Australians are not so much ‘quiet’, as ‘invisible’ – unseen by a political class that only notices those who confer electoral advantage. Thus, the attention given to the marginal seat or the big donor or the person who can guarantee a favourable headline and so on…
The ‘invisible people’ are fearful and angry.
They fear that their jobs will be lost to expert systems and robots. They fear that, without a job, they will be unable to look after their families. They fear that the country is unprepared to meet and manage the profound challenges that they know to be coming – and that few in government are willing to name.
They are angry that they are held accountable to a higher standard than government ministers or those running large corporations. They are angry that they will be discarded as the ‘collateral damage’ of progress.
And in many ways, they are right.
Is democracy failing us?
After all, where is the evidence to show that our democracy is consciously crafting a just and orderly transition to a world in which climate change, technological innovation and new geopolitical realities are reshaping our society? Will democracy hold in such a world?
By definition, democracy accords a dignity to every citizen – not because they are a ‘customer’ of government, but – because citizens are the ultimate source of authority. The citizen is supposed to be at the centre of the democratic state. Their interests should be paramount.
Yet this fundamental ‘promise’ seems to have been broken. The tragedy in all of this is that most politicians are well-intentioned. They really do want to make a positive contribution to their society. Yet, somehow the democratic project is at risk of losing its legitimacy – after which it will almost certainly fail.
In the end, while it’s comforting to whinge about politicians, the media, and so on, the quality of democracy lies in the hands of the people. We cannot escape our responsibility. Nor can we afford to remain ‘quiet’. Instead, wherever and whoever we may be, let’s roar: We are citizens. We demand to be seen. We will be heard.
The Ethics Centre’s next IQ2 debate – Democracy is Failing the People – is on Tuesday 27 August at Sydney Town Hall. Presenter and comedian Craig Reucassel will join political veteran Amanda Vanstone to go up against youth activist Daisy Jeffrey and economist Dr Andrew Charlton to answer if democracy is serving us, or failing us.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
Big Thinker: John Locke
English Philosopher John Locke (1632—1704) is behind many of the ideas we now take for granted in a liberal democracy. Amongst them, his defence of life and liberty as natural and fundamental human rights.
He was especially known for his liberal, anti-authoritarian theory of the state, his empirical theory of knowledge and his advocacy of religious toleration. Much of Locke’s work is characterised by an opposition to authoritarianism, both at the level of the individual and within institutions such as the government and church.
Born in 1632, in his time he gained fame arguing that the divine right of kings is not supported by scripture. Instead, he defended a limited government whose duty is to protect the rights and liberty of its citizens. This idea is familiar to us now, yet at the time it was revolutionary, arguing against the monarchy as the source of society’s governance. A familiar idea in modern day, at the time it was revolutionary – an argument to depart from the monarchy as the source of society’s governance.
In defending his stance, Locke appealed to the notion of natural rights. He invited us to imagine an initial ‘state of nature’ with no government, police or private property. Locke argued that humans could discover, through careful reasoning, that there are natural laws which suggest that we have natural rights to our own persons and to our own labour.
Eventually we could reason that we should create a social contract with others. Out of this contract would emerge our political obligations and the institution of private property. In Locke’s version of the social contract, a human “divests himself of his natural liberty, and puts on the bonds of civil society…agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community” and by submitting to majority rule form a government designed to protect their rights.
The limits of power
Locke’s argument also places limits on the proper use of power by government authorities. While civil society, as viewed through Locke’s liberalism, sees that the individual must sacrifice – or at least compromise – his/her freedom in the name of the public good, the public good ought not to interfere with the individual’s freedom.
Due to this emphasis on liberty, Locke defended a distinction between a public and a private realm. The public realm is that of politics and the individual’s role in the community as a part of the state, which may include, for example, voting or fighting for one’s country. The private realm is that of domesticity where power is parental (traditionally, ‘paternal’).
For Locke, government should not interfere in the private realm. He held the argument that citizens were entitled to protest or revolt or disband a government when it failed to protect their collective interests. On this view it is crucial we distinguish the legitimate from the illegitimate functions of institutions.
Locke asked us to use reason in order to seek the truth, rather than simply accept the opinion of those in positions of power or be swayed by superstition. In this way, we see Locke as an Enlightenment thinker –our natural reason a light that shines, guiding our understanding in order to reveal knowledge.
Knowledge and personal identity
As an empiricist, Locke believed we gain our knowledge through experiences in the world. In contrast to the views of his rationalist predecessor Descartes, Locke argued that we are born as a blank slate or a tabula rasa. This means that at birth our mind has no innate ideas – it is blank. As our mind develops, sensations give rise to simple ideas, from which we form those more complex.
This theory of learning gives rise to another radical idea for his time. Locke asserted that in order to help children avoid developing bad thinking habits, they should be trained to base their beliefs on sound evidence. The strength of our belief should correlate to how strong or weak the evidence for it happens to be.
Furthermore, for Locke, our consciousness is what makes us ‘us’, constituting our personal identity.
Locke’s legacy
We see Locke’s legacy in the 1776 US Declaration of Independence, which was founded on his natural rights theory of government and proclaimed ‘we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’.
Following on from his theory of human rights, we also see Locke’s legacy in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948. Philosophers debate as to whether such rights are indeed ‘natural’, or whether they have been ‘constructed’ and agreed upon by society as useful rules to adopt and enforce.
Locke’s lasting legacy is the argument that society ought to be ruled democratically in such a way as to protect the liberty and rights of its citizens. And that the government should never over-step its boundaries and must always remember it is a glorified secretary of the people.
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BY Dr Laura D’Olimpio
Dr Laura D’Olimpio is senior lecturer in philosophy of education at the University of Birmingham, UK, and co-edits the Journal of Philosophy in Schools.
Why purpose, values, principles matter
In advising organisations about ethics and culture, our Ethics Centre consultants often start by asking a simple question: “Do you have an ethical framework?” What we’re trying to understand is whether the company has a well-defined purpose, supported by values and principles. It’s the bedrock upon which every successful and well-run company is built.
Over the last twenty years we have witnessed a veritable roll call of organisations who have faced an ethics crisis. And for some, this crisis has threatened their very existence. And while the individual factors will vary, there is often one underlying root cause of this failing – a drift from the organisation’s ethics framework.
An ethics framework is a critical foundation for any organisation. It expresses their purpose, values and principles – quite literally, what they believe in and what standards they’ll uphold. In making these visible, as well as living across everything they do, it allows the organisation to be the best possible version of itself, now and into the future.
If an ethics framework is practically useful, it will provide a way to diagnose ethics failure, apportion responsibility and offer a means to provide justice for victims. However, this is merely the minimum standard. It also provides the ideal that should be strived for.
An ethics framework demands something more than mere compliance. It asks employees to exercise judgement and accept personal responsibility for the decisions they make. In order to be effective, it must be consistently embraced by every member of the organisation.
- Values tell us what’s good – they’re the things we strive for, desire and seek to protect.
- Principles tell us what’s right – outlining how we may or may not achieve our values.
- Purpose is our reason for being – it gives life to our values and principles.
The power of a good ethics framework
A strong ethics framework will unite an organisation’s workforce under a common goal, creating a far better workplace culture in the process. It will help leaders make decisions that are consistent with purpose, and improve decision-making capacity across the organisation. It supports a company to be more adaptable to change and clearly demonstrates to clients, customers and other stakeholders what they stand for and where they’re headed.
A company will struggle to develop consistent workplace policies or a corporate strategy without an ethics framework. But the reverse is also true: with an ethics framework all of these processes become far easier to navigate.
Purpose
In designing an ethics framework, much is made of purpose statements – primarily because they tend to be the most visible, public-facing feature of the framework. Creating a great purpose statement is something of an art form, it needs to achieve a great deal in a few words. It should be inspiring, have an aspirational quality, and capture the essence of your company’s ‘why?’.
Ideally, purpose statements should describe how your company is satisfying a need in society or in the market. Examples include Disney’s “To make people happy” or technology powerhouse Atlassian “To unleash the power in every team”. We’re quite proud of The Ethics Centre’s purpose statement which is “To bring ethics to the centre of everyday life.”
Values and principles
Values and principles enable employees to distinguish between what is regarded as important and the means by which they should be pursued. They help to frame business activity to ensure it stays true to its purpose and contract with society. A good framework will be;
- Stable – will not change significantly (in its essence) over the long term
- Understandable – by all of those required to apply it in practice
- Practical – able to be applied in practice and with consistency
- Authentic – it will ‘ring true’.
Good for business
Having an ethics framework isn’t designed to maximise profits – it’s designed to protect and improve the relationship between business and society. But it does often benefit business as a commercial enterprise as well. By motivating employees and demonstrating the value and purpose of the business to them, they serve as ambassadors for the organisation.
Although purpose statements, corporate values and organisational principles aren’t a guarantee of perfect ethical conduct, they are a crucial ingredient in building a culture in which bad behaviour is discouraged and dis-incentivised. They’re also a flag of goodwill to stakeholders that an organisation is looking to serve humanity and not simply turn a quick buck.
Ethics frameworks are not magic bullets to solve an organisation’s problems – they won’t guarantee that all employees will do the right thing every time. But approached with the proper degree of care and sophistication, the very process of developing these codes can have a profoundly positive effect on the culture of an enterprise. In establishing the things you believe in and identifying the behaviours you wish to encourage, you establish a framework for a great corporate culture – one based on respect, trust, collaboration and accountability. And who wouldn’t want that?
Creating an ethics framework
It may surprise you to learn that many companies have no ethics framework at all. And of those that do, many are working with largely meaningless statements that offer little in the way of guidance. Some were written decades ago. Some were cooked up by marketing strategists as part of a corporate branding exercise. Whatever their provenance, there’s a sense that the framework has ceased to have any meaning for the people who work at the company.
Developing an ethics framework is only the starting point. Ensuring the framework is fully embedded and understood throughout an organisation and lived by its people is the harder challenge. Over three decades of consulting work, we’ve helped countless organisations to develop and embed their ethics frameworks. We’ve worked across multiple sectors and with companies of many shapes and sizes.
If you’d like to talk to The Ethics Centre about creating an ethical framework for your organisation, we’d love to hear from you.
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BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
How to spot an ototoxic leader
We all know about toxic leaders. There are plenty of them around. Some are especially skilled with the ability to use their words to grind down anyone they perceive as a threat.
I call these leaders ototoxic – named after the medical description of drugs that cause adverse reactions to the ears’ cochlea or auditory nerves.
Ototoxicity is a distinctive quality of a poor leader, who can leave a trail of damage.
Ototoxic leaders betray themselves by a number of logical fallacies – hallmarks of their communication style. US President Donald Trump has given us plenty of examples during his presidency.
They play the person not the argument
The ototoxic leader will go after a person’s character or pick on a personal trait. They take aim at anything personal, but will avoid addressing the logical merits of the argument. This is known as an ad hominem fallacy.
Donald Trump critiqued fellow Republicans – “Lyin’ Ted” (Cruz), “Lil’ Marco” (Rubio), “Low Energy Jeb” (Bush). There were also repeated references to “Crooked Hillary”. He repeatedly accused opponents of being “too aggressive”, (usually a woman) or “not forceful enough” (usually a man), or in the case of “Lil’ Bob” Corker, of not being “tall” enough to be taken seriously.
They use straw-man arguments
An ototoxic leader will also exaggerate, or blatantly fabricate, an opposing point of view. This allows them to position their perspective as more reasonable and practical. In the third presidential debate before his election, Trump accused Hillary Clinton of advocating an open border policy, misquoting comments she made in relation to free trade. In a climate of widespread national hostility towards immigration, the border wall seemed to many as the more reasonable option.
In the workplace, an ototoxic leader will use overblown rhetoric to belittle someone else’s initiative, exaggerating potential cost overruns or overstating other risks in order to then position their proposal as the more reasonable one.
They appeal to hypocrisy
This defensive strategy turns an initial criticism back on the accuser. Trump used this rhetorical flourish during his presidency after refusing to face criticisms that he didn’t take a position on the violence following the Charlottesville rally. Rebutting the criticisms of neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan, Trump maintained that ‘many others’ had also done bad things, implying they were equally culpable.
In the workplace, an ototoxic leader can often be heard defending their actions using the appeal to hypocrisy. “You think I’m aggressive? What about that meeting last week when you didn’t agree with me? You were just as bad, if not worse!”
They use the firefighter arsonist tactic
Named after the rare syndrome where firefighters light fires intentionally only to later arrive as a hero to put it out, the ototoxic leader will overly dramatise a potential problem, at the same time pointing the finger of blame at others for causing it. Once the situation reaches a critical mass, the ototoxic leader will then step in with a last-minute solution, ‘saving the day’.
Trump is well versed in this tactic. Stoking anti-Muslim sentiment as early as March 2011 with his calls for then President Obama to show his birth certificate and trading on unfounded ‘birther’ claims, Trump proceeded to inflame fears throughout the election campaign. He threatened the mass deportation of Syrian asylum seekers while promising to create a database of all Muslims in the US, along with making false claims of seeing ‘thousands and thousands’ of people in New Jersey celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Centre Towers in 2001. Trump stepped in to solve the ‘problem’ by signing his two travel bans within the first 100 days of his tenure.
More recently, Trump repeatedly covered himself in glory after meeting Kim Jong-un at their historic first summit in June 2018. Mere months after painting Kim as “Little Rocket Man” who, according to Trump posed the greatest threat to Western civilisation and was enabled by his predecessors who “should have been handled a long time ago”, following the summit Trump celebrated the “success” of the meeting. He waxed lyrical about the leaders “tremendous” relationship, including the beautiful “love letters” he received from the North Korean dictator in the lead up to the summit, while going on to extol the virtues of Kim, including his “great personality”, his sense of humour, intelligence and his negotiation abilities. Following the script of the hero who rides in to save the day, Trump tweeted that “everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office…there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.”
In the workplace, the ototoxic leader will spark a flame of disquiet around a project or strategy then proceed to escalate concerns – often through back channel politics – before presenting a grand ‘solution’ that saves the day.
Passive and aggressive
Ototoxic leaders can be aggressive or passive. The actively toxic communicator, who uses aggressive and intimidating language to subordinate others, can be bombastic, opinionated and openly dismissive of those who have different views. Their default mode of questioning almost exclusively involves closed questions (yes or no). Their inability to be open and listen to other’s views is usually a symptom of their lack of empathy.
The passive ototoxic leader is no less poisonous. In one-on-one settings, they are an impatient listener and will quickly interrupt their interlocutor in order to express their own view, often cutting the other person off in mid-sentence.
This ototoxic leader will tend to become frustrated in meetings if the consensus view is running contrary to theirs, to the point they will actively disengage from what’s going on in the room. They will resist all attempts to re-engage them by looking to shut down the conversation wherever possible.
Energy suckers
The net effect of the ototoxic leader’s tactics and communication style is to de-energise those they come into contact with.
Research shows that these de-energising ties have a disproportionate impact on an organisation’s culture. They are a ‘toxicity multiplier’, reducing the levels of individual performance, employee engagement and general well-being.
A disproportionate level of conflict between teams is generated and trust decreases. Rather than investing the energy to achieve their goals, those who work under an ototoxic leader spend a disproportionate amount of time analysing the relationship and devising strategies to palliate the person.
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BY John Neil
As Director of Education and Innovation at The Ethics Centre, John collaborates closely with a talented team of specialists and subject matter experts to shape the tools, frameworks, and programs that drive our work forward. He brings a rich and varied background as a consultant, lecturer, and researcher, with expertise spanning ethics, cultural studies, sustainability, and innovation. This multidisciplinary perspective allows him to introduce fresh, thought-provoking approaches that energise and inspire our initiatives. John has partnered with some of Australia’s largest organisations across diverse industries, to place ethics at the heart of organisational life. His work focuses on education, cultural alignment, and leadership development to foster meaningful and lasting impact.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Save the date: FODI returns in 2020!
Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI), Australia’s original provocative ideas festival, returns in 2020 for its 10th festival. April 3 to 5 will be a milestone weekend of provocation, contemplation, critical thinking and preparation for the battles of the next decade.
Presented by The Ethics Centre, FODI 2020 will once again feature leading thinkers from Australia and around the world to interrogate the issues of today and prepare for the major shifts of tomorrow.
FODI Festival Director, Danielle Harvey said: “Over the past decade the number of avenues for people to talk and share their opinions has steadily increased, we are more connected than ever with like-minded people, but the cost has been significant. We are losing the ability to listen.
“Without the tools to listen to other opinions and contemplate new ideas, society risks fracturing like never before.”
“Without the tools to listen to other opinions and contemplate new ideas, society risks fracturing like never before. The Festival of Dangerous Ideas has always been an opportunity for deep thinking, carving out precious space for disagreement, difference of opinion and critical thinking.
“As we brace for 2020, FODI will celebrate its 10th anniversary by looking again to the future and presenting a cohort of FODI alumni, representing the world’s best thinkers, journalists, creators and specialists, giving Sydneysiders an opportunity to listen to what will be shaping the world tomorrow.”
The Ethics Centre Executive Director, Dr Simon Longstaff said:
“The Ethics Centre is thrilled to once again be presenting the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. One of The Ethics Centre’s strategic priorities is to build and sustain the ‘ethical infrastructure’ that underpins a free, dynamic and democratic society.
“Fragile societies break apart when challenged. The resilient cohere around a common desire to face the truth – even if it is hard to bear.”
“Fragile societies break apart when challenged. The resilient cohere around a common desire to face the truth – even if it is hard to bear. FODI tests the truth of the claim that we are a ‘civil’ society – and proves that even in moments of profound disagreement – we have the strength to live an ‘examined life’.”
Last year’s sell-out festival featured Stephen Fry, Rukmini Callimachi, Niall Ferguson, Megan Phelps-Roper, Chuck Klosterman and Toby Walsh.
More information, including the full program and festival venue, will be announced in the coming months. Visit festivalofdangerousideas.com to subscribe to be the first to hear our news.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Drawing a line on corruption: Operation eclipse submission
The Ethics Centre (TEC) has made a submission to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) regarding its discussion paper, The Regulation of Lobbying, Access and Influence in NSW: A Chance To Have Your Say.
Released in April 2019 as part of Operation Eclipse, it’s public review into how lobbying activities in NSW should be regulated.
As a result of the submission TEC Executive Director, Dr Simon Longstaff has been invited to bear witness at the inquiry, which will also consider the need to rebuild public trust in government institutions and parliamentarians.
Our submission acknowledged the decline in trust in government as part of a broader crisis experienced across our institutional landscape – including the private sector, the media and the NGO sector. It is TEC’s view that the time has come to take deliberate and comprehensive action to restore the ethical infrastructure of society.
We support the principles being applied to the regulation of lobbying: transparency, integrity, fairness and freedom.
Key points within The Ethics Centres submission include:
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- There is a difference between making representations to government on one’s own behalf and the practice of paying another person or party with informal government connections to advocate to government. TEC views the latter to be ‘lobbying’
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- Lobbying has the potential to allow the government to be influenced more by wealthier parties, and interfere with the duty of officials and parliamentarians to act in the public interest
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- No amount of compliance requirements can compensate for a poor decision making culture or an inability of officials, at any level, to make ethical decisions. While an awareness and understanding of an official’s obligations is necessary, it is not sufficient. There is a need to build their capacity to make ethical decisions and support an ethical decision making culture.
You can read the full submission here.
Update
Dr Simon Longstaff, Executive Director at The Ethics Centre, presented as a witness to the Commission on Monday 5 August. You can read the public transcript on the ICAC website here.
BY The Ethics Centre
The Ethics Centre is a not-for-profit organisation developing innovative programs, services and experiences, designed to bring ethics to the centre of professional and personal life.
Should you be afraid of apps like FaceApp?
Until last week, you would have been forgiven for thinking a meme couldn’t trigger fears about international security.
But since the widespread concerns over FaceApp last week, many are asking renewed questions about privacy, data ownership and transparency in the tech sector. But most of the reportage hasn’t gotten to the biggest ethical risk the FaceApp case reveals.
What is FaceApp?
In case you weren’t in the know, FaceApp is a ‘neural transformation filter’.
Basically, it uses AI to take a photo of your face and make it look different. The recent controversy centred on its ability to age people, pretty realistically, in just a short photo. Use of the app was widespread, creating a viral trend – there were clicks and engagements to be made out of the app, so everyone started to hop on board.
Where does your data go?
With the increasing popularity comes increasing scrutiny. A number of people soon noticed that FaceApp’s terms of use seemed to give them a huge range of rights to access and use the photos they’d collected. There were fears the app could access all the photos in your photo stream, not just the one you chose to upload.
There were questions about how you could delete your data from the service. And worst of all for many, the makers of the app, Wireless Labs, are based in Russia. US Minority Leader Chuck Schumer even asked the FBI to investigate the app.
The media commentary has been pretty widespread, suggesting that the app sends data back to Russia, lacks transparency about how it will or won’t be used and has no accessible data ethics principles. At least two of those are true. There isn’t much in FaceApp’s disclosure that would give a user any sense of confidence in the app’s security or respect for privacy.
Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t amounted to much. Giving away our data in irresponsible ways has become a bit like comfort eating. You know it’s bad, but you’re still going to do it.
The reasons are likely similar to the reasons we indulge other petty vices: the benefits are obvious and immediate; the harms are distant and abstract. And whilst we’d all like to think we’ve got more self-control than the kids in those delayed gratification psychology experiments, more often than not our desire for fun or curiosity trumps any concern we have over how our data is used.
Should you be worried?
Is this a problem? To the extent that this data – easily accessed – can be used for a range of goals we likely don’t support, yes. It also gives rise to a range of complex ethical questions concerning our responsibility.
Let’s say I willingly give my data to FaceApp. This data is then aggregated and on-sold in a data marketplace. A dataset comprising of millions of facial photos is then used to train facial recognition AI, which is used to track down political dissidents in Russia. To what extent should I consider myself responsible for political oppression on the other side of the world?
In climate change ethics, there is a school of thought that suggests even if our actions can’t change an outcome – for instance, by making a meaningful reduction to emissions – we still have a moral obligation not to make the problem worse.
It might be true that a dataset would still be on sold without our input, but that alone doesn’t seem to justify adding our information or throwing up our arms and giving up. In this hypothetical, giving up – or not caring – means abandoning my (admittedly small) role in human rights violations and political injustice.
A troubling peek into the future
In reality, it’s really unlikely that’s what FaceApp is actually using your data to do. It’s far more likely, according to the MIT Technology Review, that your face might be used to train FaceApp to get even better at what it does.
It might use your face to help improve software that analyses faces to determine age and gender. Or it might be used – perhaps most scarily – to train AI to create deepfakes or faces of people who don’t exist. All of this is a far cry from the nightmare scenario sketched out above.
But even if my horror story was accurate, would it matter? It seems unlikely.
By the time tech journalists were talking about the potential data issues with FaceApp, millions had already uploaded their photos into the app. The ship had sailed, and it set off with barely a question asked of it. It’s also likely that plenty of people read about the data issues and then installed the app just to see what all the fuss is about.
Who is responsible?
I’m pulled in two directions when I wonder who we should hold responsible here. Of course, designers are clever and intentionally design their apps in ways that make them smooth and easy to use. They eliminate the friction points that facilitate serious thinking and reflection.
But that speed and efficiency is partly there because we want it to be there. We don’t want to actually read the terms of use agreement, and the company willingly give us a quick way to avoid doing so (whilst lying, and saying we have).
This is a Faustian pact – we let tech companies sell us stuff that’s potentially bad for us, so long as it’s fun.
The important reflection around FaceApp isn’t that the Russians are coming for us – a view that, as Kaitlyn Tiffany noted for Vox, smacks slightly of racism and xenophobia. The reflection is how easily we give up our principled commitments to ethics, privacy and wokeful use of technology as soon as someone flashes some viral content at us.
In Ethical by Design: Principles for Good Technology, Simon Longstaff and I made the point that technology isn’t just a thing we build and use. It’s a world view. When we see the world technologically, our central values are things like efficiency, effectiveness and control. That is, we’re more interesting in how we do things than what we’re doing.
Two sides of the story
For me, that’s the FaceApp story. The question wasn’t ‘is this app safe to use?’ (probably no less so than most other photo apps), but ‘how much fun will I have?’ It’s a worldview where we’re happy to pay any price for our kicks, so long as that price is hidden from us. FaceApp might not have used this impulse for maniacal ends, but it has demonstrated a pretty clear vulnerability.
Is this how the world ends, not with a bang, but with a chuckle and a hashtag?
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BY Matthew Beard
Matt is a moral philosopher with a background in applied and military ethics. In 2016, Matt won the Australasian Association of Philosophy prize for media engagement. Formerly a fellow at The Ethics Centre, Matt is currently host on ABC’s Short & Curly podcast and the Vincent Fairfax Fellowship Program Director.
Big Thinker: Jeremy Bentham
The consequences of our actions are important and we should weigh these up when we consider what we should do.
Some philosophers have taken this idea even further, claiming that outcomes are the only criteria by which the moral worth of an action should be judged.
Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832) was the father of utilitarianism, a moral theory that argues that actions should be judged right or wrong to the extent they increase or decrease human well-being or ‘utility’.
He advocated that if the consequences of an action are good, then the act is moral and if the consequences are bad, the act is immoral.
Central to his argument was a belief that it is human nature to desire that which is pleasurable, and to avoid that which is painful. As a self-proclaimed atheist, he wanted to place morality on a firm, secular foundation. At the beginning of his Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation, Bentham wrote:
“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”
It is because of this emphasis on pleasure that his theory is known as hedonic utilitarianism. But this doesn’t mean we can do whatever we like. Importantly, for Bentham, it is not just one’s own happiness or pleasure that matters.
He notes, “Ethics at large may be defined, the art of directing men’s actions to the production of the greatest possible quantity of happiness.” The moral agent will perform the action that maximises happiness or pleasure for everyone involved.
Can we measure happiness?
Bentham defended an objective form of morality that could be measured in a scientific way. As an empiricist, he came up with a way to ‘weigh’ or quantify pleasures and pains as the consequences of an action.
He called this set of metaphorical scales the ‘hedonic’ or ‘felicific calculus’, allowing a rational moral agent to think through, and then act on, the right – moral– thing to do.
The ‘hedonic calculus’ is used to measure how much pain or pleasure an action will cause. It takes into consideration how near or far away the consequence will be, how intense it will be and how long it will last, if it will lead on to further pleasures or pains, and how certain we are that this consequence will result from the action under consideration.
The moral decision maker is meant to act as an ‘impartial observer’ or ‘disinterested bystander’, to be as objective as they can be and choose the action that will produce the greatest amount of good.
Do the ends justify the means?
There are some practical applications of utilitarianism. For instance, if you’re a politician in charge of making decisions that effects a large group of people, you should act in a way that maximises happiness and minimises pain and suffering. In this way, the hedonic calculus supports a welfare system that reduces unfair outcomes by redistributing wealth and resources.
Yet there are tricky aspects to the theory that must also be considered. Contemplate the saying “the ends justify the means” – what immoral action may be justified by (predicted) good consequences?
This is where ethicists start to ask tricky questions like, ‘would you kill Hitler?’. And if you answer ‘um, sure, because that will prevent a LOT of deaths’, then they will ask, ‘would you kill baby Hitler?’. You can see how it starts to get complicated.
Bentham’s theory relies on accurately predicting outcomes, and as such holds the moral agent accountable for moral luck. One might intend to do a good deed, but if an unpredictable result occurs, leading to a negative outcome, then they are still to be held morally responsible.
Visit Bentham in London
His theories were popular at University College London (UCL), where Behtham’s followers called themselves ‘Benthamites’. Among these were James Mill and his son, John Stuart Mill. J. S. Mill (1806 –1873) worried that Bentham’s theory was too hedonistic as it did not prioritise the ‘higher’ pleasures of the intellect. He added the criteria of ‘quality’ to Bentham’s calculus in order to create ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ quality pleasures.
A final, fun fact: Bentham willed his body to be preserved and displayed at UCL after his death. A visit to the philosophy department will see him in a busy hallway, merrily seated in a glass fronted mahogany case.
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BY Dr Laura D’Olimpio
Dr Laura D’Olimpio is senior lecturer in philosophy of education at the University of Birmingham, UK, and co-edits the Journal of Philosophy in Schools.
The role of the ethical leader in an accelerating world
Dr Simon Longstaff, Executive Director of The Ethics Centre, opened the recent AGSM Professional Forum: Ethical Leadership in an Accelerating World by acknowledging today’s leaders are confronted with a pace of change that is increasingly rapid, complex and deep in its implications.
They are grappling with multiple dynamic forces as they make strategic business decisions, uncover new market opportunities, and maintain their sense of purpose.
And, as we move into the Age of Purpose, they must measure up to the moral expectations of their employees, stakeholders and the public – while building trust in an increasingly sceptical environment.
As one of Australia’s leading ethicists and philosophers, Dr Longstaff said he believes ethics need to be intrinsic within leaders, especially in a time where civilisation is going through enormous change. And this starts with leaders in the boardroom. “I’d like to reframe leadership itself as an ethical practice. You can’t just add ethics into leadership. If that’s what you’re doing, you’ve misunderstood what leadership is,” he said.
Strengthening the decision-making muscle
Historically, decision-making in organisations has been heavily regulated – and Dr Longstaff says that makes it due for an overhaul. Only then can more robust ethical practices flourish throughout organisations.
“For 30 years or more, leaders have been trying to manage the rate, complexity and depth of change through the exercise of control,” said Dr Longstaff. “In this country the most prolific regulators are not in parliaments or at APRA. They’re in the boardrooms of Australia.”
He says the system has been so finely meshed that no one can choose to do anything wrong. And as a result we’ve begun to create new forms of systemic risk.
“Inside corporations, there are measures designed to make it safe. But if you create a world in which no one can choose to do anything wrong, it also means no one can choose to do anything right,” said Dr Longstaff. “If you don’t choose – you comply. And like any skill, if this muscle isn’t used and flexed, it withers away.”
This systemic impact was most clearly demonstrated in the findings of the recent Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry. The findings uncovered the implications of inaction and the way leadership behaviour can detrimentally impact stakeholder sentiment and damage trust in an organisation.
“In many cases of a compliant culture, when asked why a certain decision has been made, the answer is ‘that’s the way things have always been done’,” said Dr Longstaff. “But the fact we can do something doesn’t mean we should do it. To do so is a sign of a cultural failure, where ethical restraint should have been exercised.”
This is what Dr Longstaff calls ‘unintended negative strategic effect’: Something that can only be rectified by progressive and collaborative leaders.
“People are inherently good,” he said. “Leaders don’t wake up thinking ‘today I’m going to see how much hypocrisy I can engage in’. They are susceptible to the greater threat of unthinking custom and practice. And this must change,” he said.
Leading with moral courage and strategic vision
To create more ethical practices, Dr Longstaff suggests leaders guide their organisations through a process of ‘constructive subversion’ – to break the cycle of ‘going with the flow’ and embedding reflective practice within its culture.
“To subvert unthinking custom and practice, decision-making processes need to come back to the notion of purpose, values and principles,” says Dr Longstaff.
An organisation must have the right intent if it is to achieve its goals. To manage this, Dr Longstaff says leaders need these three key qualities:
- Moral courage – “Leaders need to have courage at the right time in the right way to offer the practice and skills to subvert unthinking.”
- Imagination – “Great leaders can imagine what it’s like to be somebody else, whether friend or foe, and understand how they see the world.”
- Strategic vision – “Leaders need the capacity to invent or discover inflection points – knowing when it’s time to action significant change.”
If leaders can set an organisation’s intention to realise its purpose-led potential, then their people can exercise their own discretion once they adopt this belief. This breaks the cycle of unthinking practice that leads to distrust from stakeholders and shareholders.
“Trust is not hard to build or sustain – there’s no real mystery about it. It’s created when individuals or organisations can declare publicly ‘this is who we are and this is what we stand for’ and act in a manner that is consistent with that’,” said Dr Longstaff.
In his keynote’s conclusion, Dr Longstaff came back to purpose and the existing structures that are in need of an overhaul.
“What is the purpose of a bank? A corporation? A market? Limited liability? All of them have purposes – and almost all of these have been forgotten,” said Dr Longstaff.
“As a society of citizens and colleagues, when we think about ethical leadership, we have to ask ourselves what we want and what will we settle for? A world of control, compliance and surveillance? Even if that was to work, would it diminish who we are as human beings?”
This article was originally published by UNSW, republished with permission.
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BY Simon Longstaff
After studying law in Sydney and teaching in Tasmania, Simon pursued postgraduate studies in philosophy as a Member of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In 1991, Simon commenced his work as the first Executive Director of The Ethics Centre. In 2013, he was made an officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for “distinguished service to the community through the promotion of ethical standards in governance and business, to improving corporate responsibility, and to philosophy.”
Shadow values: What really lies beneath?
Respect, integrity, communication, and excellence. They’re admirable and worthy corporate values – ones you’d proudly make official and put on the wall.
Unfortunately, those same values belonged to Enron. Only 12 months before declaring bankruptcy in 2001, the largest in US history at the time, Enron received plaudits for its 64 page Code of Ethics. It was named “America’s Most Innovative Company” by Fortune magazine and received numerous awards for corporate citizenship and environmental policies.
Enron’s failings have been well documented as the prototypical case study of what can happen when an organisation decouples its official values, principles and purpose – what we call an Ethics Framework – from its everyday behaviours.
It’s a perennial challenge for all organisations. Ensuring behaviour, policies, systems and processes are aligned with that ethical framework is no easy feat. If the managers of an organisation say one thing but consistently do something else entirely, it breeds cynicism and disconnection that permeates the entire workforce. Customers and other stakeholders eventually figure it out as well.
Hidden from view
Many organisations have a second set of values lurking beneath the surface. These unofficial values – no less powerful than the official ones – are called ‘shadow values’.
Uncovering shadow values can reveal deeper facets of an organisation’s actual operating culture. By proactively identifying and monitoring its shadow values, an organisation is better placed to see any early drift in the alignment of its culture from its values and principles.
Consider the fraudulent behaviour of Volkswagen engineers who deliberately programmed 500,000 diesel-powered vehicles to provide false readings during emissions testing. Despite the company’s explicit corporate values of excellence, professionalism and a commitment to integrity, it became clear through the accounts of investigators and employees, that a number of unofficial shadow values were dominating the organisation’s culture.
Volkswagen’s official and shadow values
In psychology, the dark side of human nature is often described as the alter ego. While Freud referred to the Id, Jung identified it as the shadow, referring to the sum total of all those unpleasant qualities we prefer to hide. The shadow gains its power through being habitually repressed. And it manifests in a multitude of symptoms and psychological disturbances.
Similarly, an organisation’s shadow values gain their power from being kept below the surface. At their worst, they are destructive mutations of the official values which pose an existential threat to the integrity of an organisation’s ethical culture.
Despite the official values of ‘teamwork’ and ‘respect for individuals’, Volkswagen’s implicit leadership model was widely recognised as one that valued ‘autocracy’ and delivering ‘success’ at any cost.
A focus on fear
A culture of ‘fear’ was common, with intimidation used as a primary motivator for achieving sales targets. Fear provided a bulwark against any dissenting voice being raised to challenge decisions. These voices were kept silent by a culture that fostered ‘internal competition’ and ‘secrecy’.
Shadow values can also throw into relief sanctioned organisational values, revealing subtle nuances in the way they are understood and practiced day to day. For Volkswagen, its stated value of ‘excellence’ was subsequently revealed to be a very specific type of value – ‘technical excellence’.
The value of technical excellence has been evident throughout the company’s history. Volkswagon turned to it in that 2015 scandal, just as it did in the 1970s when it was found guilty of similar manipulative practices to avoid emissions regulations.
These shadow values had their genesis in the shift in VW’s purpose. Following the appointment of Martin Winterkorn as CEO in 2007, Volkswagen set itself a goal: “To become the world’s largest automaker by 2018”. Winterkorn’s strategy was premised on developing a competitive advantage in ‘clean’ diesel rather than hybrids and other alternatives.
A shift in purpose
With tighter regulatory controls in the US, intense pressure was focussed on engineers to develop a technical solution, which they duly delivered, under the authority of the shadow values. In secretly modifying existing software capabilities that overrode pollution controls, Volkswagen went on to sell over 12 million illegal vehicles and met the target of becoming the “world’s largest automaker”, three years ahead of schedule.
This shift in purpose was not recognised formally in the company’s ethical framework. Allowing shadow values to proliferate unmoored the company from its purpose, values and principles. Indeed many of those shadow values were officially discouraged by VW’s ethical framework.
After his appointment in June 2017, new CEO Matthias Müller noted, “Our management culture needs to improve… openness, the courage to make innovations and speak one’s mind, as well as true willingness to cooperate are all essential elements… We need a solid system of values as a compass for our daily work.”
One hopes this “solid system of values” will be more attuned to the ones that might be still operating in the shadows.
At their worst, shadow values are in complete opposition to official values. At their best, they provide a nuanced expression of what an organisation really cares about. Either way, they are very revealing of an organisation’s true, operating culture.
The Ethics Centre is a world leader in assessing cultural health and building the leadership capability to make good ethical decisions in complexity. To arrange a confidential conversation contact the team at consulting@ethics.org.au. Visit our consulting page to learn more.
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BY John Neil
As Director of Education and Innovation at The Ethics Centre, John collaborates closely with a talented team of specialists and subject matter experts to shape the tools, frameworks, and programs that drive our work forward. He brings a rich and varied background as a consultant, lecturer, and researcher, with expertise spanning ethics, cultural studies, sustainability, and innovation. This multidisciplinary perspective allows him to introduce fresh, thought-provoking approaches that energise and inspire our initiatives. John has partnered with some of Australia’s largest organisations across diverse industries, to place ethics at the heart of organisational life. His work focuses on education, cultural alignment, and leadership development to foster meaningful and lasting impact.