My workplace adopted a corporate ethics policy this year. We had to fill out a conflict-of-interest questionnaire and attend an ethics training run by lawyers from Omaha. It was mostly useless, full of commentary relevant more to the very wealthy and the very businesslike than to the semi- and sometimes bona fide academics in my area. Ethics as far as the company is concerned is primarily an assertion of corporate property rights, which cannot be circumvented by our hypothetical rich uncles. (So you know.) In short, ethics is defined:

• Put interest of organization you serve over self interest
• Put interest of greater good you serve over self interest
• Accountable to self

Never mind the unparallelism or the fact that ethics is defined without some respect to good or moral action isn’t it nice that the organizational comes before the greater good? Other things I learned:

• There are lots of examples out of golf where people [act ethically].
• Lawyers on the coasts lie more than lawyers in the Midwest.