Dr. Frank Mitchell

As I do every semester, I am teaching a Business Ethics course at a major urban university.

Your proposed "ethics code" is a wonderful new example of a widespread phenomenon, namely the public exposure of an organization's complete ignorance of ethics. There are thousands of examples of poor ethics codes on the web, but my students are always interested in the newest developments.

Let us take just one example: your code says that members of your association will abide by "applicable laws." While it's nice that you have paid attention to the language of Sarbanes-Oxley, the fact of the matter is that laws that are "applicable" may also be unethical. Are there no African-Americans associated with your organization? It's not long ago that "applicable laws" in some U.S. states mandated discrimination based on race. Such discrimination was legally required--and completely unethical.

You may rely on a good deal of word of mouth publicity for your exposure of your ignorance. How useful it is that your commitment to ROI will make it possible for me to post these comments on your website, as well as making them to my students--who, by the way, are at this point in the sixth week of the course and already know more about ethics than those who were involved in writing your failed code.

March 9, 2005

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