Hey! Whats With the Long Face?

Im going to keep it brief today folks. Brief but worth the time and worth the read.
This weekend I was visiting family and had the pleasure of engaging in a great conversation about business ethics with my sister-in-law and her main squeeze. As controlers and auditors, they are often faced with wrestling with business ethics issues. They are often put in the position of informing executives that somebody in the organization is on the take or is engaging in less than exemplary behaviour. Listening to their stories got me thinking about ethics issues in my own business. As I shared my own stories with them, I realized that I was getting really upset.
It dawned on me that violations of ethics really got under my skin. As I thought about the conversation later in the day, I was impressed with how much it really means to me to be ethical and to work with others that are ethical as well.
In many ways, these ethics issues are one of the main factors in problems with job satisfaction. When your values are different from your customers or co-workers, it creates problems of community and commonality. It can be one of the major factors in "burn-out".
When you cant live your values at work, you will become very unhappy, very quickly.
Take the time to review your ethics and value structure and locate areas at work that force you to violate or walk the line. If it is a relationship with a customer, take the time to redefine it. If you have problems with the business ethics of a co-worker, find a way to suggest a better way of doing things. Im not suggesting that you blow the whistle or make accusations. Just begin to lead by example and be willing to bring up ethics issues at group meetings.
When others realize that you hold a higher standard, they will most often try to live up to your expectations and make changes for the better.