Posted on: Monday, September 15, 2003

AT WORK
It'll take more than ethics classes to keep greed out of future workforce

By Chad Graham
The Des Moines Register

While I listened to a recent ethics discussion in an auditing class at the University of Iowa, an image of Gordon Gekko popped into my mind.

Remember him? The ruthless businessman played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 film "Wall Street"?

"Greed — for lack of a better word — is good," he said to shareholders in one scene. "Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

"Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA."

Eeeek.

These accounting majors were first-graders when "Wall Street" graced the big screen. I hope they've never rented the movie.

I hope, when they land their first jobs, they're never tempted to revisit 1980s greed.

Or 1990s greed. Or the new millennium greed.

It's been more than a year since scandals rocked Enron, ImClone, WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, Xerox, Qwest and other companies. Sobering accounts of investors who lost life savings have all but vanished from the media, because Congress' Sarbanes-Oxley Act — requiring more stringent accounting rules — is in effect.

Did those college kids really learn anything? Honesty and trustworthiness can be bandied about in a classroom, but it's basically ingrained — or not ingrained — in kids by the time they enter junior high school.

When these kids get jobs in corporate America, will they pad hours charged to a client? Will they fudge their expense report? Will they take a really long lunch under the guise of meeting with a client? Will they take credit for a co-worker's project?

Maybe.

"There are all kinds of ethical dilemmas that entry-level professionals will face. It's not just the Ken Lays of the world faced with these dilemmas," said professor Lynn Pringle, citing the former Enron executive. "With the devastation of those scandals, we have to take measures to instill sound ethical behavior in our students."

What worries Pringle, however, is the effect of an unethical company's culture on the students.

Here's a possible problem: Let's say Billy is told a payroll audit will take five hours. Billy is new and it takes him eight hours to finish the project. But Billy wants to impress the boss and puts down for five hours — not collecting for the other three hours.

The ethical question: How far should Billy go to fit in to the company? How much should he let his employer take advantage of him?

Billy might also start to feel that the company owes him for the free work, so he'd start bilking the company in other ways.

So starts the dysfunctional relationship between Billy and his employer.

Pringle stresses to students that their ethical problems will seem to be small, but the small dilemmas can lead to bigger ones.

To demonstrate, Pringle shows two commercials made by accounting firm PricewaterhouseCooper.

In the first, a man scrapes against a car, knocking off the other car's side-view mirror. The man pauses and places his business card on the other car.

In another, a woman gets coffee and discovers that the vendor gave her too much in change. She then returns the money.

The students already know to expect interviewers to ask them about similar ethical scenarios.

"I'm not really sick of talking about ethics; I think it's an important issue to address," said Brad Downes, a senior and business major at the university from Bettendorf, Iowa.

"I always think: How would I feel if I was one of the lower-level employees (of the scandal-plagued companies), losing all my 401(k) or my investments because of the actions or interests of upper management?"

Downes had to laugh at the PricewaterhouseCooper videos.

A few weeks ago, in an ice cream shop, he gave the clerk a $10 bill. The clerk thought Downes had given him a $20 bill, so he handed back too much change.

Downes returned the cash.

Not bad.

Take that, Gordon Gekko.