Why should businesses care about ethics?

Author: Professor Blay Whitby, a philosopher and ethicist concerned with the social impact of new and emerging technologies.

The rise in generative AI in recent years has led to an unprecedented interest in the technology and to a whole range of new use cases for Rapport. As we discuss opportunities with our clients and prospects, the question of ethics inevitably comes up.

In order to address some of these ethical questions we have engaged with Professor Blay Whitby, a philosopher and ethicist concerned with the social impact of new and emerging technologies. This blogpost is the start of a series aimed to tackle some of the ethical questions businesses may face when using emerging AI technologies.

Professor Blay Whitby

It takes a lot of resources - up to and maybe including a compliance department - to make sure your business is not on the wrong side of the law. How much time and money are left over to worry about ethics? Ethics is a vague area anyway and probably a distraction from the bottom line – or so you may think. 

I want to claim exactly the opposite. In the modern business world being ethical is probably essential and usually adds value to your business. 

Navigating the ethical landscape

So how can being ethical add value? Firstly, modern technology is advancing faster than the legislators can enact laws to govern it. Maybe this has always been true since the first industrial revolution but it’s certainly true now. In the field of IT for example, legislation tends to be at least a decade behind the technology.

What’s worse is that when laws are eventually passed, they tend to be rather heavy-handed. It is not good business to suddenly find that a product or service you have been selling for ten years or more is about to be made illegal. You need to keep ahead of any legislation in the area of your business.

So that means not taking your business in directions that might turn out to be illegal in the future: in other words, running an ethical business. It is also worth considering making some input into the legislative process yourself. In my experience parliamentarians tend to be well-meaning but have little or no technical knowledge. They rely on trade bodies and usually self-appointed technical experts to fill in the gaps. The best way to avoid heavy-handed legislation affecting your business is to set a good example, so that the legislation follows your example of best practice.

Adobe images: Generated with AI

Ethical practices as a competitive edge

An important second reason for being ethical is the fact that your business is doing its best to behave ethically is in itself a selling point. Some businesses will be on the wrong side of the law, some constantly having to adjust to keep within the law. This is not a good look to customers or the general public.

Actually, I don’t like the usual term ‘compliance’ for handling legal requirements. It suggests that a business has to check itself frequently to make sure that it doesn’t break the law. This seems rather like those drivers who need to brake hard for speed cameras because they are usually breaking the speed limit. Surely a well-run company should not need constant checking to remain within the confines of the law. If there is tension between your business activities and the law it might be worth having a high-level meeting and asking why.

Anne Fehres and Luke Conroy & AI4Media / Better Images of AI / Hidden Labour of Internet Browsing / CC-BY 4.0

Attracting and retaining talent

Thirdly, these days you’ll almost certainly find that running a more ethical company than your competitors makes it easier to recruit and retain talent. People, especially young people, care about ethics. No one wants to work for a company that might ask them to do things that go against their conscience. Even the sort of person who doesn’t care about conscience and only wants to make money will be aware that they could be the ‘scapegoat if malpractice by their employers is exposed. So, an ethical company is more attractive to potential employees. 

Adobe images: Generated with AI

Implementing ethics

How hard is it for a business to be ethical? That depends on how you do it. It costs very little to declare yourself an ethical business, produce a statement of company values and a code of conduct. The hard part is taking steps to prevent these being mere words. Your mission statement may be used to ridicule your business in the media if you obviously fail to live up to it and of course, it’s not only senior management who need to need to abide by the code of conduct, but also every employee.

Running key decisions past an ethics committee is the way things have to be done in academia, some government departments, and in the health service. It’s fairly common in the business world too. It might be a good idea for your business. Ethics committees are not expensive luxuries for only the largest and most profitable companies. Usually they are staffed by volunteers – paying your ethics committee is clearly unethical because it creates a conflict of interest. There will be some costs in the time of any company representatives on the committee and there should probably be at least one – though not so many as to force any decisions through.

Adobe Images

Business people often feel that the commercial problem with having an ethics committee debate policy decisions is that it delays things. In many areas of business, one needs to move fast. It’s true that some ethics committees in the health sphere can take a very long time to arrive at conclusions but this problem is not insuperable. Your ethics committee could be given a deadline if business decisions require it. If everyone else is working to a deadline, then the ethics committee can do that too. You could also consider having the ethics committee debate company policy after the event. Perhaps this requires confidentiality and some difficult management decisions if the ethics committee conclude that extant company policy is unethical. However, it’s still an effective way of being more ethical.

A student once turned in an essay for me that included the sentence: “Being ethical means letting your competitors take advantage of you.” I hope I’ve convinced you that is a rather naïve view of business and on the contrary, that there are many ways in which being ethical can give competitive advantages.