Seize the Opportunity
Joan E. Dubinsky
Executive Fellow, Rutland Institute for Ethics
February 26, 2024
Recently, I was asked to share some observations about my 45 years of experience as an attorney and business ethicist. What a great opportunity to summarize the sights, sounds, challenges, and victories that I have enjoyed. Let me share with you some highlights and the lessons I have learned
Lesson #1 Seize the opportunity before you even know you have one
How did I become an ethics officer? It was1985, in Washington, DC. Dick Schubert was the president of the American Red Cross where I worked as an Associate General Counsel. Mr. Schubert was in the habit of clipping articles from the New York Times and circulating a copy to all of his senior staff – with the not-so-subtle expectation that we read the article and pass it to the next name on the list. This was an article about why it was so difficult to teach ethics to Harvard MBA students. Since I did not understand the unwritten rules, I immediately went to Mr. Schubert’s office and said, “We are the Red Cross. You ought to do something about ethics.” To which Mr. Schubert replied, “I want you to be my first ethics officer.” Stunned, I asked, “What am I supposed to do?” To which he replied, “You have 18 months to go figure it out.” I thought I had volunteered. Later, I learned that Mr. Schubert and the General Counsel drafted me. In other words, I was set up.
And over the decades, that simple conversation led me to a career doing ethics with organizations like the American Red Cross, the MITRE Corporation, Arthur Andersen, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the International Monetary Fund, BAE Systems, NA, and the United Nations.
In the mid 1980’s, Business Ethics was an entirely new profession. This was the immediate post-Watergate era. Government officials and defense contractors were under intense scrutiny for unethical and often illegal contracting practices. It was 5 years before I realized that I had any colleagues in this new undertaking. And it was not until 1991 that I realized that doing ethics and doing law were fundamentally different.
What is the primary duty of an attorney? Zealous advocacy for the client. What is the primary duty of an ethicist? Zealous advocacy for the truth. I have learned how to disagree and deliver unwelcome news without scuffing the shine on your shoes. That is called “telling truth to power.”
Despite some differences between law and ethics, modern organizations must pay attention to values and ethics as well as laws and compliance. Compliance builds the foundation and signs off on the blueprints. Ethics builds the house and says to family and friends come on in. As Richard Breeden, former Chairman of the SEC, said “It is not an adequate ethical standard to aspire to get through the day without being indicted.”
Lesson # 2 Learn the House
Here’s a game that I play with my students. It reveals what it is like to work inside the United Nations and other similar international, complex institutions. Go ahead – play a round of Tic, Tac, Toe. And then reflect on what you experienced. It was fun. We took turns. We laughed a lot. We argued a bit over the rules because we did not remember when we were young. We could always start over. The stakes were very low. We could watch over shoulder and see what everyone else was doing.
And the typical game of Tic, Tac, Toe is diametrically opposed to how the United Nations and their sister organizations actually operate.
The UN is rarely orderly or predictable. In Tic, Tac, Toe there are only 8 winning solutions. At the UN, there are infinite solutions, provided that 193 sovereign nations can reach consensus. Working at the UN is interesting, engaging, challenging and deadly serious. It is not in the interest of many countries to politely sit back and take turns. This leads to innumerable rules and inevitable arguments that precede getting the job done. The unwritten rules of how things get done are dense, complex, confusing, difficult to find, and challenging to apply. You have to Learn the House in order to make a lasting contribution.
By Learning the House, you come to understand the written and unwritten rules of how work is accomplished, how to communicate, and ultimately who you are.
Lesson #3 Know the People
The United Nations and the IMF are some of the most diverse organizations anywhere on the globe. In my 5 years leading the UN’s Ethics Office, I enjoyed working with 11 staff members, 2 consultants, and 1 intern. They shared 20 spoken languages and came from 13 countries.
All international civil servants take an historic and momentous Oath of Office that is simple in execution and deep in meaning. All of us who work for the UN serve the Secretary General, by placing the best interests of the UN always in view. We can neither seek nor accept instructions from any authority outside of the UN. We are expected to be discrete, conscientious, professional, compliant, and obedient. I was not an appointee of the United States government, neither was I any country’s advocate or delegate. I could not execute or even hint at a policy or decision that would favor one country over another. The UN is the world’s largest and messiest democracy where each one country enjoys exactly one vote.
The UN was created to prevent nuclear war and the third World War. It arose from the ashes of 1945. As the late and beloved Dag Hammarskjold, the UN’s second Secretary General (1953 to 1961) once said, “The UN was not created to get us all into heaven, but to keep us out of hell.”
People make the UN, and people can break the UN.
Lesson #4 Ethics is simple – until it’s not
The UN’s Ethics Office was created in the immediate aftermath of the Oil for Food Scandal. The majority of the work that I did – and continue to do with my client organizations – was to provide independent, professional, objective, neutral, and confidential advice to individuals who believed they had a moral choice to make. Can I march in a political parade? How do I refuse a diplomatic gift of a camel? Can I sign a petition? Can I take a second job? What do I do if my former lover applies to work for me? Now what do we do? Our Executive Director stands accused of retaliation, corruption, abuse of power, or sexual harassment?
Ethics is one of the few disciplines where we are still arguing about the very definition of ethics and what it means to be ethical. At the UN, it was not my domain to settle territorial disputes between India, Pakistan and China; determine whether the UN was liable for introducing cholera into Haiti after the earthquakes of 2010; eliminate corruption; or find peace in the Middle East.
Ethics is far more than getting one’s own way by calling your counterparty “unethical.” We think about ethics – and we act ethically in millions of small and subtle ways. Ethics is about the little stuff, which cumulatively becomes the architecture of our collective lives and shapes the societies in which we live.
Lesson #5 Show your work and share your thanks
Nick Jackson, the former CEO of Global Fund to Fight HIV, TB and Malaria, explained that as ethicists, we have a duty to show our work. We can never assume that anyone else can read your mind. Explain how you reached your decision. Learn how important it is to engage with your interlocutors, even if you suspect that you fundamentally disagree. Agreement is not the goal: understanding is. Instead, it is our collective challenge to work to build ethical awareness and appreciation for how we addressed the thorny problems that we will encounter in our lives and careers.
And now, let me share my thanks. First and foremost, let me acknowledge my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Bill McCoy, Executive Director of the Rutland Institute for Ethics, the Institute’s amazing advisory board, the faculty and students at Clemson University who engage with the Institute, and each of you who cares about ethical decision-making. You have welcomed me to your homes and hearts and allowed me to serve for five years as a Fellow with the Rutland Institute for Ethics. My term ends in June 2024. I shall miss each of you.
Who would ever have thought that a young Jewish woman from St. Louis, Mo, who received her first passport when she was 42, who thought that the “big city” was Chicago, and New York was in a different country, who spoke schoolgirl French with a Quebecois accent, would ultimately learn to seize the opportunity and work as the Chief Ethics Officer for both the IMF and the UN.
I have traveled to 6 of our globe’s continents, visited countless national capitals, spoke before the General Assembly, met Pope Benedict XVI, shaken the hands of global leaders, heard the stories of thousands of people dedicated to making our globe—our only globe—a better place. Along the way, I have traveled to refugee camps, war-torn countries, and peacekeeping missions.
When you see an open door, look both ways, don’t bother knocking, and walk on through.