THE PRINCIPLES OF SUCCESS

TWO WORDS JUST MAY DETERMINE how high and far you go in your career and, don't laugh, the words are: business ethics. It used to be that “business ethics” was a synonym for hot air, but no more. The Securities and Exchange Commission is holding companies' feet to the fire. New York's aggressive (and ambitious) attorney general Eliot Spitzer is betting that he can climb into the newspaper headlines on the corpses of wrong-doing executives – and, week after week, he nails a new bunch on Wall Street, in the insurance industry or in the mutual fund sector. Post-Enron and Tyco, the lesson reverberating in corporate boardrooms is this: Getting caught doing bad things will destroy you.

And an emerging parallel lesson is: do right, and do it publicly, and you just may find yourself on a faster track to success. Do-gooders are no longer necessarily road kill on the corporate highway of success. That's a big change – monumental, really – but it's one that you'll need to adjust to.

Now it's pop quiz time:

• Your boss tells you to flat-out lie to a customer. “Tell him the product will do x,” even though you know it won't. What do you do?
  
  
• Everybody in your department pads expense reports. Not by a lot, just little bites. Tips are fabricated ($5 to a hotel bellman, when you schlepped the bags yourself), phantom meals are thrown in ($12, breakfast – when you grabbed the hotel's free coffee and doughnuts). Does this nickel and diming add up to a moral mess? Knowing that everybody does it, should you blow a whistle on this epidemic of petty larceny?
  
  
• Your company sells a miracle drug that lowers cholesterol – but you've seen the test data that shows an alarming increase in kidney failures among patients. Competing drugs have no significant kidney failure. Who do you tell, or do you keep your lips zipped?

The questions are hypothetical. Your answers aren't – and you will be judged by the answers you give. Make the wrong choice and, suddenly, you can find yourself doing the perp walk on the local news (think Martha Stewart). Or, less dramatically, you just may find yourself booted out of your job because you didn't do the right thing.

Jonathan Don, a business ethics professor at Villanova University, faces hundreds of ethically inquiring minds on a daily basis. They have come to school to get ahead, not to have their ears filled with platitudes about goodness being its own reward. They will not easily swallow unrealistic advice. So this is what Don tells them to do when faced with a direct order to lie, cheat or steal: “Ask questions. Buy time for yourself. Say, ‘I'm not sure I understood you. Could you repeat your instructions?' Asking plenty of questions always is a good first ethical step,” says Don.

Sounds wimpy? Call it Reality 101. Besides, the time isn't yet here for more forceful action. Hopefully, your bosses will sober up and see that, in fact, they are telling you to do wrong. But what if they persist? “Say you need time to check with the corporate counsel's office, that there are some points that need clarifying,” says Don. Don't overtly defy the boss's instruction (that's cause for firing or, at the very least, a black mark on your record), at least not immediately. Buy time and you also get a chance to fully weigh how this order sits with your conscience.

If, a day later, the situation still isn't passing the gut test –if you're still getting queasy just thinking about it – it's time to take action. “The individual has a responsibility to bring ethical concerns forward,” says Don. But how do you know you are right to question authority? Don admits that question is where the ethical pedal hits the metal. “Often these things aren't clear-cut. We do people a disservice when we tell them, ‘Just do what's right, don't do what's patently wrong, and you'll be fine.' The reality is that there are lots of shades of gray,” Don says. When do a company's ethics get so rotten that you have to quit? Don offers this perspective: “When there's a persistent pattern – when you are continually being asked to do things that are illegal or are at variance with your own values – you need to revisit what you are doing in this job. A starting step is, see if you can work this issue through the organization.” That's important, because, possibly, your boss is running a rogue operation. Before you jump off into the deep end of accusation, blow the whistle internally. Go to your boss's boss. Human resources. Possibly the corporate counsel's office. Ring lots of door bells and see who answers.

And if that round of flag-waving wins no salutes – if nothing at all is changing – quit, says Don. “Leaving becomes the appropriate action.”

Traditionally, such a move may have been considered career suicide, but the odd thing about the 21st century and business ethics is that you just may find yourself being lauded for doing so. “A few decades ago, we viewed whistleblowers and people who quit their jobs very publicly as likely to have difficulty getting other employment. Now we view them as stars!” says Don. “The whistle-blower has gone from being a pariah to someone we celebrate.”

Taking the high moral road just might light a booster rocket for your career. “Whistle-blowers have become heroes in our culture,” says Don. Remember that the next time you're told, “Just ignore it, everybody else does.” But they aren't getting ahead. You might. Blow the whistle. Hard. Loud. And keep your eyes open for the pay-off for doing good.