Ethics is 3x more important than competence when it comes to trust
The Edelman Trust Barometer is one of the go to resources for individuals, groups and organisations intent on better understanding the role trust plays in our lives.
Although I‘ve reviewed this resource each and every year for close to a decade, something really stuck out this year. Edelman is proposing that — when it comes to trust — ethics is 3x more important than competence.
In my experience, organisations place a higher ‘value’ on the competence dimension. Disproportionally so. But before diving into this, let’s ask the fundamental question: What is ethics?
If only this was easy to answer. For the sake of brevity, here’s an answer direct from The Ethics Centre.
In my words:
Ethics is about accepting we have choice. It’s about accepting that — in any given situation — there are many choices and actions available to us. Ethics is about the process we execute to determine which choice and action might be the best one.
Individuals, groups of organisations might have values and principles they reference to help define which choices and actions are best. They’re looking for alignment.
Although there’s nothing wrong with this as a starting point, it falls short of (in an organisational context) what can and probably should (I won’t push the ‘ought’ angle here) be done.
That’s exactly why we have been arguing for stronger, more empirical approaches to ethics (not in place of, but in addition to). We’ve been arguing that organisations need to design and operationalise ethics frameworks. These frameworks should build upon existing purpose, values and principles related work. They should provide a mechanism to support active stakeholder engagement. They should focus on demonstrating that key stakeholder groups ‘overwhelmingly support’ the intentions and outcomes of an organisations actions.
Here’s the punchline.
Trust disproportionally impacts bottom line business outcomes. Ethics has a 3x greater impact on trust than competence. Given that trust is at an all time low today, organisations need to get better at ethics. They need to engage customers, independent advocacy groups, regulators and other ‘key stakeholders’ in the process.
The organisations who do this the best will gain greater access to their customers (access to a broader and deeper view of the customers ‘data life’). These organisations will be able to use this data to deliver more valuable, meaningful and engaging products. These organisations will win their market.
So, the only question that remains is: What’s your ethics strategy?
Let’s talk if you’d like to define and execute one.
