Back to basics: business ethics

Public perception of the business world has reached an all-time low – and rightly so.

Bernie Madoff, swindling thousands of investors out of $50 billion in the largest Ponzi scheme ever, is a poster child of our financial system. Vikram Pandit, former professor at the Kelley School of Business and current CEO of Citigroup, tried to buy a corporate jet just days after the banking giant received $45 billion in federal bailout funds.

All told, the current economic debacle is taking quite a toll on the public’s view of business. According to the Financial Trust Index in January, only 22 percent of Americans still trust the financial system.

One way to regain the trust of the American people is to make sure our current and future business leaders have a strong ethical framework to make prudent, forward-thinking decisions. The topic of ethics, not just within Kelley but across campus, is often an afterthought, with few classes incorporating how to go about making an ethical decision.

When looking to other business schools with a focus on ethics like the University of Notre Dame and Brigham Young University, both of which have recently soared up the charts of BusinessWeek’s undergraduate business school ranking, it becomes glaringly clear that ethics needs to become more important at Kelley if it wants to retain iys position as a top-tier institution.

Kelley Student Government is working on several initiatives to make ethics an integral part of the undergraduate business education program.

A few weeks ago, the student government, along with Provelopment, the Finance Club and Kelley Consulting Group, was host to the inaugural Kelley Undergraduate Ethics Case Competition. Teams had to argue an ethical position in front of a panel of nine judges, mostly from the Business Law and Ethics department. This was a great way to show the importance of ethics at Kelley. However, more must be done.

The only course specifically dedicated to ethics at Kelley is associate professor Joel Rubin’s course, L312: The Ethical Responsibilities of Business, currently offered every spring. This is a phenomenal class full of lively discussion and case-based learning. Yet, with only 34 students, mostly juniors and seniors, the material is not reaching a critical mass of students.

One might ask, “Why not just implement this course on a larger scale, say, as a part of I-Core?” Although a candid discourse on ethics would be optimal for all students, with more than 4,000 undergraduates at Kelley, it’s clear that a change this huge cannot happen overnight.

Due to the generosity of the Jeffrey and Martha Comment Endowment Fund, Kelley Student Government receives $1,500 each year for business school organizations that are planning ethics-related events. However, little of this money has been requested or disbursed.

Hopefully we can use the monetary resources we have to instill the importance of ethics in business students and to prepare the future leaders of the world to make wise choices.