Questionable accounting cost energy giant Enron everything — and took down accounting firm Arthur Andersen with it — in the early 2000s. Following that notorious downfall, the Heider College of Business, Greater Omaha Chamber and the local Better Business Bureau partnered to create the business ethics group now called Business Ethics Alliance (BEA), with a mission to build leadership, strengthen organizations, and elevate greater Omaha through positive, practical business ethics education.
BEA will bring its mission into a one-day event, the EthicSpace Conference, to help organizations be more ethics-focused the other 364 days of the year, Robinson said. EthicSpace takes place Thursday, Oct. 13, at CHI Health Center. Enron whistleblower
Sherron Watkins will be the EthicSpace Conference’s keynote speaker.
“The Business Ethics Alliance is a community committed to having ethics at the forefront of how for-profit and nonprofit businesses operate. Business ethics matter: you know it, and your team knows it,” Robinson said. “At the annual EthicSpace Conference, business professionals and leaders come together to make time and space for business ethics conversations and learning.”
The EthicSpace Conference is for Omaha business professionals in all sectors, Robinson said.
Its main objectives are to highlight the importance of ethical decision-making and psychological safety as it relates to creating a culture of success and trust; to examine the ethical decisions and dilemmas that led to the Enron collapse to avoid repeating the same mistakes, and to identify best practices for making ethical
Business Ethics Alliance Executive Director and CEO Michael Robinson offers a succinct and memorable summary of why ethics in business are important: “Behaving ethically doesn’t cost a thing, but your decisions and actions can cost you everything.” FROM LEFT, LANCE FRITZ, CHAIRMAN, PRESIDENT & CEO, UNION PACIFIC, MICHAEL ROBINSON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & CEO, BUSINESS ETHICS ALLIANCE, AND DAVID MAYER, FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, DVORAK LAW GROUP.decisions and communicating in an effective and respectful manner.
“The conference is rich in content. I hope the Omaha business community and Omaha institutions show up in force and encourage their employees to show up,” said Dvorak Law Group founder and Executive Vice President David Mayer.
“Everyone that shows up, I hope they’re looking for one thing or a couple of things that impact how they think about business ethics, or how they think about their role in positioning their company ethically, or how they think of their role in supporting the ethical decision-making of their teams.”
Union Pacific Chairman, President & CEO Lance Fritz said he hopes participants return from the EthicSpace Conference with “practical tools and processes to get to the right answer when it comes to ethical dilemmas.”
Fritz is in his second year as chairman of BEA’s group of trustees. His company has been involved since the organization’s earliest days and Fritz has been involved for more than a decade.
“It’s unique to Omaha; there’s no other large city that has an organization like the Business Ethics Alliance that’s convened around business ethics … I believe in the mission and the work of the Business Ethics Alliance. I think it makes Omaha uniquely attractive to our employees and I think it matters to the Omaha business community,” Fritz said.
Mayer is in his second year chairing the BEA’s governing board. In 2014 he was brought into the organization by founding partners Robert Bates, a local business leader, and Beverly Kracher, Robert B. Daugherty endowed chair in business ethics and society at the Creighton University Heider College of Business.
“Those two really spearheaded the growth and idea of this organization and all of us are humbled to be a part of the continuation of their efforts; I’ve been very privileged to be part of the transition from that founders group to the next generation of leadership. We’re all under the mindset of ‘pay it forward,’” he said.
“I think [Bates and Kracher] perceived having a lawyer on the Business Ethics Alliance governing board would be something that would be in the best interest of the board and a good mouthpiece
for the organization.”
Mayer said the chair role provides an opportunity to “make a bigger difference.”
“In my role as a lawyer, I influence clients, but this gave me a bigger, broader platform to work from to promote ethical decisionmaking,” he said.
As the United States — and the world — emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are seeing a shift in ethics concerns.
“The pandemic has changed business for all of us. Many businesses across the country saw their supply chains interrupted, demand for their products and services decline, shortages in supplies and inputs, and government-mandated closures,” Robinson said. “We are all in a stage of reimagining culture.”
Businesses are facing steep inflation, Fritz said, which creates pressure for companies of all sizes but opportunity for honest selfassessment in response to such questions as “Are you gouging?” and “Are you really in need of the price increase?”
Other ethics considerations are internal and at all levels, Fritz added. For instance, are employees working from home providing the hours of work they’re reporting? Or, how do you ensure equity for employees who work in the field versus in the office?
“The world’s a tough place right now, full of a lot of conflict and a lot of opportunity for individuals to think ‘ethics is what I can get away with.’ It’s very important that we don’t devolve to that standard. Ethics isn’t doing what you can get away with,” he said. “Ethics is doing the right thing regardless of circumstances, regardless of whether anyone is paying attention or not, and putting that judgment criteria against what you do every day in every situation.”
“What’s the right way to bring people back to work? What’s fair, what’s compassionate and, ultimately, what’s ethical?” Mayer said. “Businesses are designed to make money for their shareholders, but at what cost? And how do you make sure you’re putting the best
Ethics isn’t doing what you can get away with. Ethics is doing the right thing.
interests of everyone and the company in the context of whatever decisions you’re going to make with workforce issues?”
He added, “Business Ethics Alliance allows for business leaders and the employees they govern to discuss these challenging topics and make sure they make the right decisions; it’s a platform to grow future ethical leaders.”
An emerging and challenging ethical dilemma is how to manage political divisiveness, especially when the employee base is large and diverse.
“It’s our job to sift through that and figure out: What’s the appropriate role for me to play? What’s the appropriate topic and position on that topic?” Fritz said. “And it won’t please everybody. I can guarantee that if I take a position on something, I’m going to have part of the company say, ‘Yes, that’s exactly right,” and part of the company saying, ‘Why are you talking about this?’”
Events like EthicSpace are important now more than ever, Mayer said.
“You want businesses to have ethics in the forefront of their mind and having organizations like this have a forum for training
- DAVID MAYER, FOUNDER AND EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, DVORAK LAW GROUPand tools surrounding ethics helps everybody move forward and address those ethical issues,” he said. “I don’t think the scale of a business matters. It’s about doing the right thing for right reason.”
The EthicSpace Conference is a great step, Fritz said, but he emphasized that BEA serves the community year-round.
“What we really love about the BEA is that they’re an effective tool we can use, and a collaborator and convener so we can learn from others’ perspectives,” he said. “I’m very proud of Omaha and the founders for putting together the Business Ethics Alliance. It makes us unique and it’s representative of the fabric we’re made from: we’re salt-of-the-earth, middle-of-the-country, say-what-you’re-going-to-do-and-follow-through kind of people. Our society is built from that. And I think the Business Ethics Alliance is a great reflection of that raw material.”
To find out more about Business Ethics Alliance or the EthicSpace Conference, visit businessethicsalliance.org.
You want businesses to have ethics in the forefront of their mind.
OPPD proudly supports the EthicSpace conference
Beyond creating vital infrastructure. Beyond increasing agricultural productivity. We’re committed to improving life.
We support the communities where we work and live. That’s why we proudly sponsor the Business Ethics Alliance — we applaud the work they do to make life better in our hometown. Learn more, visit valmont.com
Qualities such as integrity, trust, moral fortitude and psychological safety are timeless, and valued amid the good, bad and indifferent; however, these fundamental personal and organiza tional characteristics are only underscored in an environment forever changed by public health and social upheaval.
For almost a quarter of a century, the Busi ness Ethics Alliance and its guild of business leader-trustees have promoted ethics-build ing discussions, practices, forums, commu nity programs and its signature EthicSpace event, slated this year at CHI Health Center on October 13.
“Certainly, adherence to policies and laws is at the foundation of any understanding and conversation related to ethical leader ship,” said Casey Putney, vice president of leadership development at the Business Ethics Alliance. “In its simplest form, doing what is right is at the heart of understand ing ethical leadership. But I also think the concept deserves to be expanded.”
Pointedly, Putney noted that today’s ethi cal leadership should focus on creating a culture that allows everyone to reach their full potential.
“It’s about creating a place of safe ty where every employee feels valued, respected, appreciated and heard,” he stated. “It’s what we all deserve and desire.”
Moreover, of-the-moment ethical leaders behave in ways that not only keep respective organizations free of legal risk, Putney said, but also focus on building relationships with
those individuals that they lead.
“They work to create cultures where people feel free to be themselves, share their opinions and voice their concerns without reprisal,” he added. “Ethical leaders of today understand that inside of our organizations, we impact lives. And our employees, our teammates, carry that impact, either positive or negative, home to their loved ones.”
The Better Business Bureau’s relationship with the Business Ethics Alliance is as old as the ethical leadership not-for-profit itself; in fact, the BBB is one of three founding part ners – alongside the Heider College of Busi ness at Creighton University and the Greater Omaha Chamber.
“A high degree of trust between business es and consumers is essential for a healthy marketplace,” said Jim Hegarty, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau, Inc., serving Nebraska, South Dakota, the Kansas Plains and southwest Iowa. “That trust can be fragile and ethical leaders need to be intentional about ensuring that processes and procedures are in place to prevent ethi cal lapses from happening, as well as being well prepared to respond to an ethical issue that may develop.”
Transparency and accountability, Hegar ty continued, are “critical core values” that must be embedded into organizations. In this manner, he noted that the bond of trust between businesses and consumers
remains intact.
“For more than a century, our organization has been a leader in advancing marketplace trust,” Hegarty added. “We are duty-bound to pursue this mission, day in and day out. It is our compass. Other organizations look to us for guidance. So, it’s imperative that the BBB practice what it preaches on an organi zational level.”
Allen Fredrickson founded Signature Per formance as a business processing services provider to the health care industry in 2004. Today, he leads more than 1,000 associates across a 20-plus-state footprint as president and CEO. Among dozens of other industry and professional memberships and achieve ments, Fredrickson serves as a member of the Business Ethics Alliance board of direc tors and as a trustee.
To his former business leadership, the exec noted how developing ethical leaders at Signature Performance “starts in the hir ing process.”
“We aim to hire people of character that are eager to grow,” he continued. “This is one of the many reasons we partner with the Business Ethics Alliance. The content, con versations and programming available sup port our internal professional development opportunities. Omaha is fortunate to have a forum like Business Ethics Alliance leading the conversation around ethics in business.”
When asked about best practices honed
at his business that our readers could take away, Fredrickson alluded to the clients that they partner with in addition to the talent that they hire.
“Both are equally important,” he explained. “Doing business for the right reasons and building trust is foundational to doing exceptional work. which is espe cially important in the industry we serve — health care.”
Beyond professional development oppor tunities for all the company’s associates, Fredrickson said, it also has “The Signature Way:” eight guiding principles that define how to show up and serve as business lead ers every day.
“In health care, not all the decisions we make are simple,” he said. “The Signature Way serves as a guide for making ethical and honorable business decisions.”
The importance of ethical leadership is undeniable, Fredrickson indicated, saying it’s “everything to us.”
“From the firm’s first day … ethical lead ership has been at the core of how we do business,” he stated. “This commitment has helped us attract and retain industry-leading talent. Leading with courage, passion, respect and integrity is one of our com petitive advantages, and one of the reasons Signature Performance has been able to transform health care in the United States, by reducing administrative burdens and costs, and improving the quality, access and cost of care.”
Nebraska is bright, where a new day is always calling.
Signature Performance is transforming healthcare as we know it in the United States. We reduce administrative burdens all while improving the quality, access, and cost of care as we live out our core values of passion, integrity, courage, and respect.
Signature Performance is a proud partner of the Business Ethics Alliance and its commitment to developing ethical leaders.
ANTHONY HENDRICKSON DEAN, PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE AND ANALYTICS, HEIDER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS, CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, COLLEGE OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA AT OMAHA
JAVIER FERNANDEZ CEO, OMAHA PUBLIC POWER DISTRICT
Doing the right thing is a principle many of us are taught at a young age. This foundation is something business owners or leaders rely on to ensure their company is on a growth trajectory. Ensuring decisions are made with ethics in mind is critical.
Telling the truth, being authentic, and demonstrating a value for honesty are important parts of establishing a business that will have long-term success. While this may seem obvious to some, it is critical for leaders to expand the scope of how they think about ethical decisions in the workplace. In other words, it’s not just about making the right choice. It’s about how to approach making decisions.
“We like to say that ethical decisionmaking is a combination of both financial and social responsibility,” said Dr. Erin Bass, associate professor at the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “I try to focus on “and/and” thinking rather than “either/or” thinking that has dominated business for so long.
“That is, how can we address financial concerns and social concerns? How can we be responsible to our shareholders and our people? It’s a more complex way of thinking, but one that promotes more responsible decision-making in organizations.”
Organizations likely have core values that guide the decisions made by leaders, to ultimately reach the goals set by the leadership. Operating with an ethical mindset should be at the very foundation of those values.
Javier Fernandez, CEO of Omaha Public Power District, noted that the first step to teaching individuals how to make ethical decisions as employees is through training. At OPPD, employees review a code of ethics and agree to operate by those, but they also undergo situational awareness training that provides an understanding of which types of ethical situations they may face while at work.
“Training to make ethical decisions is much like training your physical body,” he said. “The more you exercise your ‘moral muscle,’ the more prepared you are to make ethical decisions when confronted with them. The more we prepare our employees, the more automatic ethical decision-making becomes.”
Dr. Anthony Hendrickson, dean and professor of business intelligence and analytics at the Heider College of Business at Creighton University, said that building trust is one of the core principles of ethical decision-making.
“Trust is one of the hallmarks of successful organizations,” he said. “No
one wants to do business with, work with, or live next door to someone you don’t trust, and we simply don’t tend to trust unethical people.
“Organizational success depends upon people being able to collaborate and work together. In other words, teamwork … teamwork requires confidence in your teammates and that cannot happen if you lack confidence that they will do the right thing. The ‘X’s and O’s’ of organizational strategy become irrelevant if you don’t have confidence in your teammates to act ethically.”
Dr. Hendrickson noted that once a leader has the confidence, the groundwork is there, but they must be committed to walking it out intentionally.
“Successful business requires confidence in your teammates to do the right thing,” he said. “But what is the right thing? The right thing may vary depending upon the constituency you represent. Shareholders may desire the firm to produce as much profit as possible, while customers may desire the lowest price possible.
“Good ethics is about attempting to balance those two objectives simultaneously. This is probably the biggest challenge facing businesses. How do you find the right balance? Creating the optimal profit, while providing a safe and desirable compensation and work environment for employees and producing a high-
quality product or service that is fair to the consumer may sound simple, but it is extremely difficult to execute and requires constant attention and recalibration of fairness and equity.”
Fernandez reiterated the importance of balance and teamwork.
“Our very mission requires us to approach decision-making with balance,” he said. “OPPD strives to provide affordable, reliable and environmentally sensitive energy services to our customers.
“Those three goals can compete with one another at times, so we must work to balance all three considerations with a long-term perspective in mind. This is something we take very seriously, and we know the communities we serve count on us to make the best possible decisions. To ensure we get to the best decisions, OPPD encourages all our employees to bring a questioning attitude to the workplace and expects respectful debate when difficult decisions need to be made. This approach helps employees navigate ethical situations with clarity, compassion, and integrity … by their very definition, ethical decisions often do not have a clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ so making a point to understand different perspectives can help us find common ground and the path to an ethical outcome.”
At Kiewit, the most important things we build are the relationships with our community, and with the organizations that help make it strong and vibrant.
Union Pacific is proud to support the Business Ethics Alliance’s 2022 EthicSpace Conference.
That’s one of the first questions Creighton University Associate Professor Dr. Regina Taylor asks her undergraduate students.
“Everybody has a story,” she said. And everybody, she said, has experienced a work environment where they didn’t feel psychologically safe, meaning they didn’t feel safe asking questions, taking risks or giving feedback without repercussions.
It’s a problem Gallup noted in the last State of the American Workplace Report in 2017. It found that three in 10 U.S. workers feel that their opinion matters at work.
It also noted that if the ratio moved to six in 10 employees, benefits could include: 27% reduction in turnover, a 40% reduction in safety accidents, and a 12% increase in productivity.
Dr. Erika Kirby, communications professor at Creighton University, will be discussing the intersection between psychological safety and trust through the lens of communication at the EthicSpace Conference on Oct. 13.
The two values go hand in hand, but aren’t necessarily the same.
Psychological safety describes a group culture, or a norm, while trust often describes a person-to-person relationship. Both are necessary for a company’s innovation and success.
“When you think about psychological safety as a place, or a condition where
people feel included and safe to learn and contribute, that’s an internal condition that usually takes communication from people in the organization to help encourage and manage,” Kirby said.
Taylor brought up a study that Dr. Amy Edmondson, the Harvard Business School professor who coined the term in 1999, did with hospitals. Edmondson was asking the question: do better teams with better hospital patient care make fewer mistakes?
The answer, Edmondson said in a TED Talk in 2014, was “exactly the opposite” of what she expected. It turned out that the hospitals that reported more errors ended up having better patient outcomes.
Why? Because the employees felt encouraged to speak up when they noticed something wasn’t right, even if it turned out to be a mistake on their part.
“It’s an opportunity for the organization to teach, or to course correct if something has gone negatively,” Taylor said.
To create a positive learning experience, Kirby suggested asking open-ended questions, like “what do you think happened,” rather than assuming where things went wrong.
“If you start with an open-ended question, it shows that you are open to hearing them
process through what happened and that you haven’t made assumptions,” Kirby said.
She said that reframing the conversation to a learning experience communicates to the employee that it’s okay to take risks (within reason), learn from it, and do better next time.
Alternatively, if there is a problem with a process or product, the company can now work towards a solution.
“You need different points of view or perspective in order to be successful,” Taylor said. “Conflict isn’t a bad thing and you need that in order to come up with better solutions.”
A key tenant to a psychologically safe workplace is the belief that all team members can bring up questions, problems and concerns without feeling incompetent, or like there will be a negative reaction.
However, it can be challenging not to take questions, comments or concerns personally in the beginning stages of building a safe workplace.
Kirby said the best advice is to assume positive intent, and to actively listen instead of reacting.
“There are so many ways that we can unintentionally make disqualifying comments, like saying ‘well I didn’t mean it that way,’ or ‘we already have a protocol for that,’ that make people feel like they aren’t valued,” Kirby said.
Nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions and body language, can also convey dismissal or be threatening.
“There are times where I might not be saying anything, but people are reading whether or not it’s safe to bring a topic up,” Kirby said.
Studies have shown that if there’s inconsistency between what you’re saying verbally and non-verbally the other party will believe the nonverbal cues.
“Well intentioned people can still create psychologically unsafe conditions,” Kirby said.
Developing relationships with team members can also help pave the way for a psychologically safe workplace. After all, how can you trust someone that you don’t know?
“Employees shouldn’t only see [their boss] at review time, or when [the boss] is asking them for something,” Taylor said.
The same can be said about fellow co-workers. An easy solution is to spend a little bit of time each week getting to know your team members. It can be as simple as just stopping by a co-worker or employee’s desk to ask how their weekend was. It doesn’t mean that you’re going to talk about people’s home lives all the time,” Kirby said.
“But it does mean that you know enough about it, that [the employee] can feel safe to come talk to you about it.”
“Tell me about your best boss and tell me about your worst boss.”
Being an ethical leader means using an ethical framework to inform how you apply your leadership style to the people you are en trusted to lead. It means leading with integrity such that your actions always are ethical within the context of the leadership decisio ns that you are responsible to make. Ethical leadership requires a connection between a culture of ethical behavior, ethical communication and ethical actions. At its core, leadership is the execution of the responsibility to put the people that you are responsible for in the b est possible position to succeed. Ethical leadership informs the responsibility of leading such that the team executes its mission in an eth ical fashion.
My answer is unconventional and harsh. I believe most business leaders presume they are ethical and rely on reputation and poli cies to guide company and employee behaviors. Few actually rely on regular surveys or measures of employee ethical behaviors. Few, i f any, business leaders regularly survey their employees on perceived or real injustice, unfairness, or actual behaviors in the w orkplace. Few, if any, business leaders regularly write, email or text their customers, employees or suppliers specifically about busines s conduct expectations. Few business leaders take the time to root out unfairness, inequities, disrespect, injustice and misbehavior in t heir workplace. There are other more pressing issues and besides most business leaders assume everyone knows how to behave.
Usually, when there is malfeasance or misbehavior in the workplace, employees say “No one told me,” or “Everybody does this.” A n ethical leader is only as ethical as their company’s employees overall. As the head and leader of an organization an owner, pre sident, CEO, director is an ethical leader if they responsibly lead the organization with ethical policies, timely and regular communication s, training, and active involvement in business issues that result in fairness and justice in the workplace.
A business, or any organization for that matter, will thrive with ethical leaders. Employees and customers will flock to a comp any with ethical leaders. Ethical leadership is what everyone wants, but it is not what every leader does routinely.
Being an ethical leader means, to me, that a person takes ownership and regular actions to address business ethics and complian ce in their company with passion and a plan, and not just with policies and a prayer.
Ethical leaders are able to spot wrongdoing and not overlook it. They are comfortable with having uncomfortable conversations and strive to set an example both inside and outside their organizations. Ethical leaders show integrity and do what’s right and inspire/mentor others to do the same.
Being an ethical leader means consistently doing the right thing and leading based on a defined set of values, including integrity, transparency, respect and trust. To foster an ethical culture, these values must be prevalent and modeled throughout the organization. My job as a leader is to communicate our values and ensure our team knows they can bring issues to the table to be addressed.
Clients entrust banks with their financial resources, and it’s our duty and obligation to make sure those assets are safeguarded. This is done by complying with all rules and regulations, hiring the right team members, working with proven vendors and always acting with integrity. Integrity matters in all relationships, including working internally with colleagues, externally with vendors and with the community at large. Integrity must be the foundation on which all relationships are built!
Ethical leadership can be defined as leadership that is directed by respect for ethical beliefs and values and for the dignity and rights of others. It is thus related to concepts such as trust, honesty, consideration, charisma and fairness.
This definition really resonates with me because I believe being an ethical leader means always standing in truth and honesty no matter what the situation. Ethical leaders lead with the above characteristics and will do the right thing no matter how difficult a situation may seem.
Over my career, I have had the opportunity to work with many ethical leaders who were amazing role models because of their willingness to challenge tough situations, to advocate for others when appropriate, and who were not afraid to take an unpopular stance knowing it could impact their careers. I have always admired leaders who did these things and led with these traits daily.
In today’s society, ethical leadership is more important than ever. Individuals are looking for ethical leaders who they can look up to and trust. No matter what type of environment a leader is in whether in business, education, or religious, I truly believe being an ethical leader will never go out of style.
Being an ethical leader is really important to me and at the end of my leadership journey, I hope I will be remembered as one.
ALEX WOLF PRESIDENT AND MANAGING PARTNER | KOLEY JESSEN, P.C., LLO
For me, being an ethical leader is always trying to do the right thing, especially on seemingly insignificant matters or when you think no one is looking. Being ethical is a habit that benefits from a consistent approach to all matters. How one handles seemingly small matters can influence ethical behavior when the stakes are high. If an organization is going to behave ethically, the actions leaders take on all matters are very influential to the behavior of the team.
Ethical leaders must also acknowledge that what is right is not always obvious. Decisions are not always black and white, and often there are many potentially “right” approaches to be considered. For a leader to properly consider the relevant options, it is essential to have a process based on the values of the leader and the organization. Having a trusted group of people to turn to for input and advice on decisions is also vital. The viewpoints of your trusted advisors can provide perspective and clarify your thought process.
Finally, being an ethical leader is about taking responsibility and learning from mistakes. Some of the most important life lessons are not our successes but our failures. We can acknowledge what went wrong by putting ego aside, learning from it, and driving our organization forward.
Leadership that is ethical is important for a variety of reasons, for customers, employees, and the company as a whole. Leadership skills are crucial to help create a positive ethical culture in a company. Being a good ethical leader can help clients feel that the organization is a good and trustworthy. Customers are more likely to feel loyal when they see leaders in place in an organization. In the long-run, whatever situation or business the leader is leading, will have a strong foundation and will endure any growing pain it goes through.
We asked executives: What does being an ethical leader mean to me?
Known internationally as the Enron whistleblower, Sherron speaks around the globe to a broad range of audiences about ethics and leadership, and the lessons to be learned from the collapse of Enron, where she served in a variety of executive positions for over eight years. Sherron was employed for over two decades as an executive for three large global companies, the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, Metallgessellschaft AG, the German metals giant, and Enron Corp. All were multi-billion dollar companies brought down by scandal. Sherron has seen firsthand the cost of an erosion in values. Her journey through the Enron crisis has inspired many, and has crystallized her focus to share and to improve the lot of whistleblowers and would-be whistleblowers.
Sherron Watkins is the former Vice President of Enron Corporation who alerted then chairman Ken Lay in August 2001 to accounting irregularities within the company, warning him that Enron “might implode in a wave of accounting scandals.” She has testified before Congressional Committees investigating Enron’s demise from both the House and the Senate. Sherron received national acclaim for her courageous actions and TIME magazine named Sherron along with two others, Coleen Rowley of the FBI and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom, as their 2002 Persons of the
Year, calling it “The Year of the Whistleblower.”
In recognition of her outstanding demonstration of ethics in the workplace, Ms. Watkins has received numerous honors, including the Court TV Scales of Justice Award and its Everyday Hero’s Award, the Women Mean Business Award from the Business and Professional Women/USA Organization, and the 2003 Woman of the Year Award by Houston Baptist University. Glamour Magazine named her one of its 2002 Women of the Year, and Barbara Walters included her as one of the 10 Most Fascinating People of 2002. In 2003, the National Academy of Management presented Ms. Watkins with their Distinguished Executive Award and the Women’s Economic Round Table honored her with the Rolfe Award for Educating the Public about Business and Finance.
Watkins now lectures on leadership and ethics as the Executive-in-Residence at the McCoy College of Business at Texas State University and as Professor of the Practice at KenanFlagler at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Watkins is co-author of Power Failure, the Inside Story of the Collapse of Enron (Doubleday, 2003).
Ms. Watkins is a Certified Public Accountant. She holds a Masters in Professional Accounting as well as a B.B.A. in accounting and business honors from the University of Texas at Austin.
SHERRON WATKINS SHERRON WATKINS, ENRON WHISTLEBLOWERMilton Friedman famously noted, “There is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits.” This statement has been challenged by economists, ethicists, and strategists alike, who emphasize that businesses have a responsibility to create social value in addition to creating economic value. This session will explore how businesses can be ethically responsible—maximizing financial and social responsibility. We will zero in on our day-to-day decisions as business leaders and professionals because ethical decisionmaking is the key input to ethical responsibility in business. We will examine ethical decision-making as a process and uncover the factors that influence how we make ethical decisions.
Erin Bass hasn’t stopped asking “why” since she was little. During her MBA, she discovered that she wasn’t going to be satisfied just solving problems—she needed to know first why they existed. This curiosity has led her to be a strategy, leadership, and ethics resource for the Omaha business community.
Originally from Calgary, Canada, Erin is the James R. Schumacher Chair of Ethics and an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business Administration at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) and teaches in the undergraduate, graduate, and executive programs. She maintains an active research stream on the intersection of strategy, leadership, and ethics and has presented her research at conferences across the globe. The real-world, collaborative approach to her work has allowed her to lead projects on workforce development for NCITE, the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology, and Education Center of Excellence as well as UNO’s BIG Idea on Transforming Wellness and Aging through Business, Informatics, and Technology.
In addition to her academic work, she provides personalized consulting and speaking engagements on strategy, leadership, and ethics. From Erin: “I’ve worked with organizations that have multi-million-dollar budgets, and others that rely on passionate donors for survival. I’ve experienced market booms and busts and worked with organizations to bounce back and beyond. My career path is non-linear, but through these bends and breaks I’ve gained irreplicable experiences that I use to relate to and collaborate with organizations to find and achieve success.”
Erin earned her MBA in International Business from UNO/ Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien (Vienna) and her Ph.D. in Strategic Management from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Dr. Bass currently serves as the James R. Schumacher Chair of Ethics and Associate Professor of Management at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
We have all heard phrases like: “No news is good news” … “I have an open-door policy” … and “we have a policy to help with that.” But sometimes no news—especially no news with a critical edge—means that organizational members are refraining from saying what they really think. And sometimes policies exist but people do not really feel free to use them. In this session, we note the importance of psychological safety (the belief that one can speak up without risk of punishment or humiliation) and address some ways to help build that through communication and cultivating a culture of trust.
Bio: Dr. Erika (Dakin) Kirby is a Professor of Communication Studies and the A.F. Jacobson Chair in Communication at Creighton University and a Senior Facilitator for the Anti-Defamation League. She earned her doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln with an emphasis on organizational communication. Dr. Kirby studies diversity|equity|inclusion|belonging, the intersections of working and personal life, and social change. She teaches courses on race, social justice, organizations, and communication. She co-edited two editions of Gender Actualized: Cases in Communicatively Constructing Realities with Dr. Chad McBride and has published in numerous outlets in her discipline. Dr. Kirby is past-president of the Organization for the Study of Communication, Language, and Gender. She has trained and facilitated for the past 20 years for multiple organizations. She also teaches Jazzercise multiple times a week and is a proud parent to two Creighton graduates, Meredith and Sam.
7:30 am-2 pm CHI Health Center Omaha
am Check-in & Networking 8:20-9:00 am Opening General Session 9:10-10:10 am Breakout Session I
Ethical Decision Making – Dr. Erin Bass Communication and the Cultivation of Trust – Dr. Erika Kirby 10:20-11:20 am Breakout Session II
Ethical Decision Making – Dr. Erin Bass Communication and the Cultivation of Trust – Dr. Erika Kirby
11:30 am-1:45 pm Lunch & Keynote with Sherron Watkins, Enron Whistleblower
1:45 pm Closing General Session 2:00 pm Event Concludes REGISTER BY OCT. 6 AT ETHICSPACE.ORG
