What drives unethical behaviour?
Navigating ethical failure in the banking and financial services industry
Our latest issue of future [inc] investigates themes and findings from global scandals in the banking and financial services industry.
Some scandals are caused by people who – driven by greed and the demands of a complex, fast-paced industry – choose to behave unethically.
However, evidence from social psychology points to an alternative explanation: a great deal of unethical behaviour is unconscious.
"Ethics is not definable, is not implementable, because it is not conscious; it involves not only our thinking, but also our feeling."
The paper proposes a number of interventions:
- Harnessing data analytics to measure and reward non-financial performance
- Engaging in conscious, principled reasoning
- Reducing the risk of insularity
- Making ethics part of the everyday conversation