Ethics rules should set minimum standards

Good ethics is — or at least should be — much like art or pornography: It may be hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

That is, the ethical course of action in almost any circumstance is fairly obvious. This applies in our personal lives as well as in our professional circumstances.

Thus, there are bound to be questions about the latest proposal at City Hall for ethics training for all city management or supervisory employees — including council members and their staff. Does this suggest our City Hall is suffering from, well, an ethics gap?

The problem is that ethics — particularly in a public setting — is not simply a matter of morality and good judgment. It is a matter of law.

There are complicated rules and regulations about what is ethical and what is unethical and thus not permitted. Employees and council members must constantly watch to ensure that their behavior does not cross the line.

Training makes sense from this standpoint.

But the unfortunate thing is that this body of ethics law creates a perverse situation in which people treat the rules as outside limits. That is, unless otherwise prohibited, behavior is — in a technical sense — "ethical."

It should be the other way around. The ethics rules should serve as a baseline — the bare minimum in appropriate conduct. There is nothing that says one cannot take a stand more ethical than that permitted by a close reading of the law.

It would be a shame if the ethics training amounts to something similar to those tax seminars, in which one learns how to push the limits of the law to one's own advantage. But if the seminars help change the culture so that the ethics rules are considered merely the bare minimum of conduct expected, they can do some good.