The Silent Saboteurs: Ethical Incongruence Presented by ... - ACSG

The Silent Saboteurs:
Ethical Incongruence
Presented by Lydia
Cillié-Schmidt & Anne
Buckett

Introduction
Ethical scandals
often exposed in
the national and
international media
Account for only
about 10% of the
business losses
Other 90% of losses
is caused by the
intentional,
counterproductive
behaviour of

Objectives of presentation
To recap the
definition of ethics
To describe the
various forms of
Silent Saboteurs
To discuss what can
be done to
eliminate them
To review the
presence of Silent
Saboteurs in

Outline of presentation
A quick reminder of what ethics is about
who/what are the silent saboteurs ?
The different forms of silent sabotage
A different form of benevolent sabotage –
Hacking work
What can be done to address the silent
saboteurs?
What are the silent saboteurs in assessment
centre practice?
What can we as assessment centre practitioners
do to counteract the silent saboteurs?

What is ethics?
What is your
definition of
ethical
behaviour?

Definition of business ethics
“The principles, norms
and standards that guide
an organisation’s conduct
of its activities, internal
relations and interactions
with external
stakeholders.”
Report
King II

What is ethics?
In South Africa we have guidance from:
HPCSA
Labour Relations Act
Basic Conditions of Employment
Employment Equity Act
ACSG Best Practice Guidelines

Ethics in Assessment Centres
Fairness
Objectivity
Standardisation
Transparency / openness

The silent saboteurs
Sometimes our
work
relationships, our
productivity, job
satisfaction, and
trust in our
colleagues are
damaged by the
subtle and
subversive games
that people play
It appears in the
way we treat each

Feeding the Hog

Activity 1
Review checklist
Identify silent saboteurs that you have
encountered in the workplace
5 minutes

The cost of the silent
saboteurs
The cost of these
activities:
Motivation and
morale
Stress
Quality
Staff and financial
turnover
Productivity
Pride

The cost of the silent saboteurs
Navran estimates that
for a mid-sized to large
company, losses
resulting in unrealized
productivity and
profitability due to
these behavioral types
of problem could range
from $5000 to $7000
per employee per year

Benevolent sabotage
Richard Saunders (not his real name) is a benevolent hacker. He
works for one of those banks that did its job so well in 2008 that
we landed in the worst financial hole we’ve seen since the Great
Depression
As the crisis unfolded, the bank’s senior executives cried out,
“Reports! Our kingdom for more reports!”
The problem was that what they really wanted—useful, insightful
analysis—couldn’t easily be produced with the software provided by
corporate IT
Poor Richard. What to do? Work 29 hours a day, 10 days a week, to
manually create those reports and the much-needed analysis?
No way. He hacked the system. He softened up a vendor, got a
password, tapped into the database, and began creating neverbefore-possible
reports for the C-suite
Would the bank’s auditors and IT security guys freak out if they
knew that Richard had hacked their system? Uh, yes
But since then, Richard has become incredibly productive and is
now a go-to guy companywide. He’s a hero to all those senior execs
who wanted more than data dumps. If only they knew the full story

Benevolent sabotage
Do you know the
cheat codes for
work?
Do you know how
to save business
from itself?
Hacking Work
will show you
how…

Benevolent sabotage
Try to identify what
the concept of
“Benevolent
Hacking” means
when viewing the
following video clip

Benevolent sabotage
Hackers work around
the prescribed ways of
doing things to achieve
their goals
The benevolent among
them do this rule
bending for the good of
all
And once frontline
performers and middle
managers try hacking
work—and discover
they’ve increased their

Silent Saboteurs vs. Benevolent Hackers
Good
Is there a
difference
using the
definition
of ethics?
Self
Other

Activity 2
What are the silent saboteurs in AC
practice?
Identify the key silent saboteurs in AC [e.g.
turning a blind eye, accepting less than stellar AC
practices, not keeping your skills current etc.]
Brainstorm for solutions to silent
saboteurs
15 minutes

What to do?
Perceptions must be aligned with the company
culture
Clarify expectations for all stakeholders e.g.
test administrator, assessor, participant
Proactive communication and candour
Supervisor/manager must take an active
personal role
Employees must have a clear knowledge of
their organization's ethical standards and
have a feeling of management support when
they act within those standards

What to do?
Management must demonstrate through
consistent examples their personal alignment
with documented ethical principles and values
Organizations must “walk the talk”
Self-serving people are destructive over the
long run
Relationships are ruined and trust is destroyed
Integrity, openness, fairness and credibility,
are the vital elements

What can we as AC practitioners do?
Keep up to date with local and
international best practice standards
Don’t compromise on your principles
“Phone a friend”
Is it legal?
Is it right?
Will you openly tell others?

Sources
Bill Jensen and Josh Klein, Hacking Work:
Learn to love the rule breakers. January–
February 2010. Harvard Business Review
Positive Employee Practices (PEP):
http://www.navran.com/
http://www.onlineethics.org/cms/4745.aspx