IN a former life, I built up a successful company dispensing ethical advice to major companies across the world. We called ourselves Integrity Works. Because we believed that it did – for both companies and individuals.

Along the way, we learned a few lessons about how large organisations work. Some of these corporations were larger and more powerful than many countries.

Lesson 1. A fish rots from the head down. If the leader is corrupt, then ethical behaviour will be in short supply right across the board. Hannah Arendt described the culture of Nazi Germany as the “banality of evil”. Everyday folks took part in unspeakable acts simply because the culture in which they were immersed said it was fine to do so. Now, I am not saying businesses and organisations are anything like such extremists; but I do maintain it can be relatively easy in most bodies to get someone to do questionable things if their mortgage payments depend on it.

Lesson 2. You need to be very clear about what you stand for. And what you will not stand for. Businesses need to balance profits with conduct. In most cases it’s easy to make money. Ask any drug dealer. What’s harder is to sleep at night. It is telling that a study of retired corporate executives revealed what they regretted most about their business life was acting unethically when they had other choices.

Lesson 3. Poor ethical standards often lead to corporate tragedy. Think of the major corporations such as Enron that are no longer with us. Many foundered through bad behaviour. They had choices, but elected to behave badly.

Lesson 4. If corporate standards are important to the leadership, then they need to spell these out. Along with the penalties for breaches of ethical standards. Otherwise, this is not ethics. It’s public relations.

Lesson 5. In almost all cases, whistle-blowers are victimised. It is rare for any of those who speak out to be rewarded for their courage. More commonly, they are shunned; forced to resign and frequently harassed afterwards. With the result that cowardice is contagious.

Let me give you an up-to-date example of somebody who faced that age-old dilemma. What happens when one is asked to behave badly but their conscience makes it impossible?

Alexandra Hall Hall – remember the name. She is a former British diplomat of 33 years standing, with posting in Bangkok, New Delhi and Bogota. She resigned her post as Brexit counsellor at the British Embassy in Washington DC in December 2019.

Her concern was that “she was required to tell lies about the implications of Brexit, in violation of civil service duties of integrity, honesty, objectivity and impartiality”.

She added: “The low point for me was when I heard a senior British minister openly and offensively in front of a US audience, dismiss the impact of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit on Irish businesses as just affecting ‘a few farmers with turnips in the back of their trucks’.

(Imagine for a moment what the same British minsters are saying about Scottish interests to the US and other nations.) In her resignation letter, Alexandra Hall Hall goes on to say; “I was witnessing “behaviour to our institutions which, if it were happening in another country, we would almost certainly as diplomats have received directions to register our concern. It makes our job to promote democracy and respect for the rule of law overseas that much harder, if we are not seen to be upholding these core values at home.”

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Now we come to a crucial aspect of the corruption of our institutions by Johnson and his cabal. As Alexandra Hall Hall puts it; “What I find surprising is not that a few people spoke up or resigned over Brexit, but that so many didn’t, even when the British Government was found to have acted unlawfully by proroguing Parliament, and subsequently threatened to defy the Benn Act, risking an unprecedented political crisis.

She adds; “And when my decision to resign became clear, the overriding priority was to keep me silent.”

Now, it may be helpful to think of the Code of Ethics used by many businesses and organisations as a form of “constitution”.

Its place is to superintend the entire operation and state real penalties for breaches of its requirements. Likewise, if it is the case that lousy ethics heralds corporate tragedy, then we may see here what might bring about the demise of “Global Britain”. It has no ethics code that might constrain the Government; therefore, it is likely to pile deceit upon deceit until the institutions upon which it depends collapse under the strain.

COP26 activist Graeme Eddols is Wednesday’s guest on the TNT show. Join us at 7pm on IndyLive