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Another way to get at this issue of moral obligation within our societal leadership roles is to consider a book by John Maxwell entitled There Is No Such Thing as “Business” Ethics.¹ What does Maxwell mean by this title? He unpacks the concept in several ways. First, Maxwell states that the only principle that really matters for ethical conduct in business is one that is not peculiar to business (or any other profession or occupation)—the “Golden Rule,” commonly understood as doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.² Second, Maxwell believes that anything short of this ethical standard, and especially anything peculiar or specific to a given profession, will not and cannot provide the moral character necessary to bring people to in fact “do the right thing” within their vocational practices. The point Maxwell drives home again and again is that one has to become the kind of individual who can treat others in a loving, altruistic manner in order for the Golden Rule to appear in the first place. It cannot be legislated in policy. It has to be incarnated in people.

Since this kind of ethical character is not routinely required or developed in our leaders and professionals, industries have instead created what we call “professional ethics.” These are policies that have been developed in our contemporary context to deal with specific circumstances and situations, but rarely if ever do they deal with actually “being” an ethical person. Instead, “professional ethics,” or “business ethics,” only educates people about ways to stay out of trouble with the law, fellow professionals, and customers or clients. Ethics have come to be defined only as legal behaviors or practices, not qualities of character in moral agents who are tasked to pursue and achieve general flourishing and common welfare.

This was demonstrated during the “tech bubble,” in which several Wall Street securities firms were fined huge sums by the SEC for misleading clients with investment advice. Yet five years earlier, the SEC commissioned a study on compensation and demanded across the board “ethics training” for investment brokers.³ One wonders if regulators truly believed such “ethics training” would prevent breaches of fiduciary responsibilities and unethical treatment of clients. Is it knowledge alone that will stem the tide of unethical abuse?

In fact, neither the SEC nor any other governing agency has the power to achieve what ethics training must actually produce in practice. What all our ethics training courses, both secular and religious, fail to do is forge moral agents. The result of any course of study in ethics must be both the knowledge