It’s my first outing as Ethics Girl, so I thought I’d better warn you.

Business ethics are under the spotlight – and the news isn’t good. While you all momentarily scrabble to hide those fiddled expense forms and hang up the receiver on your personal calls, let me regale you with some facts and figures. Only 47% of global respondents to the 12th Edition of the Edelman ‘Trust Barometer’ say they would trust their business ‘to do what is right’. In the UK the figure is an even more pitiful 38%. A scan of the FTSE 100 annual reports by the [Chartered Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA)] reveals that 92% of our leading companies provide no metrics on ethics in their report – they may refer to the subject but no substantial information or evidence is provided.

I can hear you thinking: “So what’s new?

“Our businesses are morally bankrupt. We lost faith in them as moral entities long ago. But nothing ever really changes.”

Ethical business is possible

I would argue though that things have changed. A spate of monumental disasters – in the banking sector particularly – where the pursuit of short-term gains eclipsed the need to behave in a humane manner, the need for business to be ethical is clearer than before. Ethical business is possible provided we grasp one simple concept – a business is only as ethically sound as the sum of its parts. In other words, the people who work for it.

If just a handful of employees act in a morally dubious fashion, the organisation as a whole will see its integrity compromised. Okay, one rotten apple may not fell the tree but only a few are needed to poison the harvest. We need to root out the worm before the rot sets in – we must act decisively.

How many of us can say that we have, at all times, under all circumstances, acted in the most ethical manner in the workplace? Not one of us. And how am I so sure? Because even the most trivial acts: the regular Facebook breaks; the entirely unnecessary coffee and cake triumphantly pushed through on expenses; the grouch you had in the kitchen about your colleague, can compromise your business morally not only in the eyes of others but more importantly, your own.

If you lack trust in your organisation’s ability to uphold moral standards and deal with breaches of conduct then the likelihood is you too will take advantage of the unethical culture, even if it is in the most benign manner.

It remains rare for employees to purposefully break rules. Yet many do so subconsciously because ethics are so far from the forefront of their minds. For far too long there has been a damaging disconnect between personal standards and organisational success. If people don’t believe their behaviour has a bearing on how the organisation performs, ethical standards are easily to ignore.

And if employees have grown accustomed to a blind eye being turned towards the favouritism, bitching and general lazy attitude that pervades the office floor, the confidence in the organisation’s morality is lost. Few enjoy working in such an environment, but it would also seem that even fewer are willing to take responsibility for changing it. If we all persist to simply reject the notion that the ethical failings of our business has anything to do with us, that nothing can be done by an individual to stop it, the organisation will continue to slide down the slippery slope. We need to rid ourselves of the belief that business ethics are superfluous, that it asserts the obvious, that if you are “doing enough” by your own moral standards, you really are doing enough.

Individual responsibility is key to making our businesses more ethical. Set an example. Anyone who fails to should be exposed and reprimanded; the resurrection of the code of conduct is crucial; laissez-faire attitudes towards ones own ethics and those of ones business need to be banished. Each employee needs to take ownership of the organisation’s moral reputation. Only then, with our own ethical behaviours under the spotlight, can we begin to rebuild the reputation of our businesses and UK plc.

Aggie Sutcliffe returns as Ethics Girl in a fortnight.