Why Saying “I'm Sorry” Isn't Good Enough: The Ethics of Corporate ...

Ethics Corporate Apologies
by name some of the worrisome and suspect practices widely believed to be rampant in
the mortgage industry as a whole. Or he could have admitted to some specific errors in
business judgment on the part of Citigroup’s leadership. Courts generally do not hold
executives and boards of directors legally responsible for business judgment mistakes.
Instead, Prince regrets his failure to foresee that which was allegedly unprecedented and,
therefore, likely unforeseeable. In other words, his apology is not an apology at all
because no one needs to take responsibility for the failure to be omniscient.
Prince clearly understands that his audience is expecting an apology. He argues, in effect,
that neither he nor any other bank can legitimately be held accountable by the audience
because everyone held the same false belief that mortgage-backed securities were safe:
“Everyone, including our risk managers, other banks, and CDO structurers, all believed
that these …securities held virtually no risk. It is hard for me to fault the traders who
made the decisions to retain these positions on Citi’s books” (quoted in Dash, 2010, 1).
Former Citigroup board member Robert Rubin provided an analogous minimization. As
the Times put it, Citigroup board member Rubin “also showed some contrition but
stopped short of accepting responsibility for the banks’ woes [by citing] at least nine
different causes for the financial crisis, which formed a toxic cocktail that, he claims,
‘almost all of us’ missed” (quoted in Dash et al, 2010, 1). Like his fellow bankers, Rubin
was conspicuously vague when it came to admitting what he and the banks did (or failed
to do) to contribute to the crisis. vii The absence of any detailed discussion as to what these
financial firms did wrong and why these actions were problematic makes it difficult for
the audience to believe that these executives grasped the magnitude of their firms’
wrongdoing. Such perceived cluelessness – or dishonesty – can lead audience members
18