What we choose to say, when we say it, and how it is said often determines our ethics.
The entire real estate business is based on the premise of honest and straight forward disclosure. This is designed to make transactions honest and fair for buyers and sellers.
Without proper and honest disclosure, how can we achieve compliance and get to ethics?
The answer of course, is that we can’t.
Sixteen years ago, my family and I bought our wonderful home. We relied on the buyers accurately disclosing the state of their house.
In the disclosure statement, they claimed that the roof had been replaced.
Six months after living in the house, several leaks appeared in our kitchen area. They were fixed at our expense and clearly came from the roof.
Our instincts told us that there was a possible ethics issue in play. We called the company that had replaced the roof and reported to them where the leaks had occurred.
To our amazement and disbelief, the company stated to us that they had not replaced the south part of the roof over the kitchen but in fact had replaced the north roof.
We immediately contacted our real estate agent who did not want to be involved and suggested this was a matter between us and the previous owners. The seller’s agent did not want to be involved either and said that we could take our complaint to their senior managers and compliance department.
It was clear as the water on a Norwegian fjord that the sellers misrepresented in the disclosure agreement what portion of the roof had been replaced. Where was their ethics and why did they try to pull the rug over our eyes?
One of the reasons we have so much systemic rot in for profit enterprises has everything to do with a lack of disclosure and a failure to report conduct that doesn’t meet a threshold of what is right, what is compliant, and is grounded in questionable ethics.
What typically happens is most employees are reticent to report the smallest incidents, thinking that it won’t have an impact or simply get swept under the carpet. So, they do nothing.
Over time this snowballs into cultures who produce convenient sound bytes all pointing to disclosure, compliance, and a culture of ethics. In fact, what they have created is a dishonest and unauthentic culture where leaders and managers consistently protect their own interests.
This is unacceptable, must stop, and we cannot continue to pretend it isn’t a problem in American business. Those of us who has been burned no better.
Ethics is understanding the difference between right and wrong and then doing the right thing.
I would submit that doing the right thing is having the moral courage to report questionable or illegal conduct and having the proper systems and people in place who will thoroughly investigate these matters. We cannot tolerate organizations who lash back at whistle blowers, put their careers on hold, make their work life miserable, and not be held accountable in any way.
There are good examples of organizations who are morals based and strive each day to improve the lives of their employees, suppliers, customers, shareholders/stakeholders, and the communities they serve. They understand that ethics must precede disclosure and compliance.
We should study them always striving to improve ourselves and the organizations who employ us.
Should we make mistakes that would cause us any personal embarrassment or shed a poor light on our colleagues, it is imperative we learn from them, always resolving them fairly and equitably.
Consult your moral compass every day without failure. Our ethics starts and ends there.
Do your best every day. No one can expect more or less from any of us.
My very best/blessings,
Mark
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