THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ETHICS & INTEGRITY
This is still a question I get asked so many times when I talk and train Integrity leadership and development.
At this time universally, so many organizations have been destroyed by corruption, it’s never more valuable to increase our integrity meter and raise awareness.
Organizations need to learn that one employer or leader, not acting with integrity can impact negativity on productivity, the companies name and end up with a bad review on Google.
It can be as small as not keeping ones word, poor delivery or saying something, promising another and doing something else. We all want to trust the people we do business with and trust is part of integrity.
Integrity is the most misunderstood word with organizations loving to use the word as part of their values, however even though people may understand what it means, they don’t know how to practice it. Add ethics into the equation and it gets really confusing.
Ethics are the moral principles that govern a person’s behaviour or the conducting of an activity. Ethics can also be defined as the rules and regulations that have been created for an organizations to allow employees to work in accordance to moral principals
Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles and doing the right thing. Ethics is more external (rules, regulations, code of conduct) whereas integrity is more internal (the individuals decides whether they going to uphold the ethics of an organizations).
Ethics can be enforced, but unless you have integrity, you won’t be ethical and, more simply put, ethics happen externally, whereas integrity occurs internally. Professions have a code of ethics to which their members are bound. These codes were adopted to put forth the type of conduct that is and is not acceptable to these professionals. Ethics principles are found everywhere, but their shared purpose is to set standards for what is and is not considered moral behaviour. For example as psychologists and counsellors, we have a code of ethics that we can’t have an outside relationships with the people we council; however if we don’t have integrity, we won’t uphold this code.
Ethics is not a choice, integrity is a personal choice. Ethics can be imposed on employees but integrity cannot be imposed on. This is why it is so important to do preventative integrity training awareness, because the individual decides each day whether to act with integrity and do the right thing or not.
The integrity of a business affects all customer groups and every area of business operations. This is why it is essential to incorporate ethics and integrity into the core fabric of the organization, and today more than ever, people need to understand that it does not matter whether you work from home or in the office or anywhere remotely their integrity impacts on the ethics of the business.
At the end of the day, you decide whether you have integrity and contribute to the company code of ethics to help the company develop and, in turn, develop you.
Please contact us if you want to develop the level of integrity in your organization.
We offer courses virtually, online, face to face and mentoring in order to build an organizational culture where integrity is high and therefor there is less a chance of having an integrity lapse.
‘Integrity costs nothing, but when you lose it, you lose everything.” Charissa Bloomberg
Charissa Bloomberg is a Celebrity Psychologist regularly appearing on South African Radio and Television. She has 22 years of experience facilitating within organizations and is an integrity leadership specialist. For comments and queries regarding integrity in the workplace, email: cb@hiddendimensions.co.za website www.charissabloomberg.com www.integrityforum.co.za