Incest 0000i-xiv FM 1 - William L. White

Professional Closure 75
on the principle that noble ends justify questionable means. Evil done in
the name of good is a common legacy of closed systems.
The evolution of rule-breaking in a closed system can be quite subtle.
It begins with what might be considered minor indiscretions—a disregard
for zoning and licensing regulations, a failure to adequately
document financial transactions, or the fabrication of some piece of documentation.
Organizational leaders and members always see themselves
cutting corners in the name of some higher good. When caught in such
indiscretions, they portray themselves as passionately committed humanitarians
or honest entrepreneurs caught in the red tape of senseless
and incompetent bureaucrats. In later stages of closure, grosser breaches
of ethical and legal conduct occur as a result of the deterioration of the
physical and emotional health of organizational members.
It is not unusual in closed systems to find that resources that once
went to the noble cause are progressively reallocated to meet the needs
of the high priest/priestess and members of the inner circle. Advanced
stages of closed systems are noted by exorbitant salaries, large bonuses,
large pensions, personal loans, and perks of inconceivable proportions:
cars, airplanes, homes, clothing, servants, chauffeurs, bodyguards.
Many closed systems have even used a service veneer to exploit their
not-for-profit tax structure to subsidize extravagant lifestyles for the
high priest/priestess and the members of his or her inner circle. Secret
slush funds, fund diversion, and “creative accounting” are the norm.
In the end, the visionary goal is eventually sacrificed for the leader’s
appetite for power, recognition, money, or sensory gratification. Closed
organizations are marked by a kind of moral disorientation that makes
this corruption of founding values possible and rationally justifiable.
Sustained isolation and the loss of objective, internal feedback means
the absence of any moral or ethical gyroscope within the organization.
What’s amazing is not that ethical breaches or outright corruption are
rationalized inside the system but that the rationalizations are believed
by members for such a long period of time. Ex-members are left to ponder,
“How could we have been there and not seen what was going on?”
Closed systems perceive and respond to ethical dilemmas very differently
than more open systems. Basically good organizations, like basically
good people, can make stupid decisions, suffer lapses in sensitivity, and
commit harmful acts. What marks healthy organizations is their ability to
recognize such lapses and correct themselves. There are two crucial elements
here: a capacity for self-scrutiny and a capacity to initiate action to