Picture this: An association vice president casually mentions to his director of meetings, "I was hoping you could recommend a nice beachfront hotel in Florida for me and my family." She does. "I was hoping you could help me plan my family vacation," he says a few months later. She does. Next: "I was hoping you could get us an upgrade." Done, again. Before long, the planner is calling in favors for complimentary accommodations and using free airline tickets earned through group travel to conventions for him and his family. Ethical or unethical? Definitely unethical, says Tyra Hilliard, Esq., CMP, a meetings industry attorney and associate professor, tourism & convention administration, University of Nevada - Las Vegas, who witnessed this scenario firsthand. Unfortunately, it is not an isolated incident. Ethics is a hot-button topic today and it reaches all businesses and every level of government. Vice-presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's recent indictment in an information-leak scandal seemed like an opportune time for President Bush to require the entire White House staff to go through an ethics refresher course. But no such course on ethical policies seems to exist in the meetings industry. "Systems are not put in place to manage behavior and expectations or, if they are put in place, they are inadequate, vague, or in need of updating," Hilliard said. "Sarbanes-Oxley [2002 law passed by President Bush] and other mandated processes are helping, but they don't apply to all types of organizations." Without written policies in place, an ethical gray area creates uncertainty and the need for each person to search his or her own conscience. For instance, there's the question of whether meeting planners should keep the points earned from booking meetings personally, considering it a job perk, or give them back to the organization to be used in whatever way it deems appropriate.

"If a company doesn't have a policy in place for this and a meeting planner doesn't ask for clarification - or asks and doesn't get a definitive response, then the slope gets slippery," said Hilliard.

Drawing the Line

How does she draw an ethical line in the sand? "As trite as it may sound, I go back to the classic ethical tests for behavior: Would you tell your mother about it? If it was written up on the front page of your hometown newspaper, would you be embarrassed by it? If the answer to either of these questions is 'yes,' the situation bears a harder look," said Hilliard. "I also think that disclosure is key to drawing the ethical line. When in doubt, 'fess up to what you have done, are doing, or plan to do. Lay all the cards on the table with complete honesty."

Bruce Harris, president of Conferon Global Services, believes that everyone "faces ethical decisions every week of our business lives. So how do we choose the right ethical decision?"

He recommends asking yourself these questions: "'If my employer or other person I respect in my work knew of my decision would they be proud of me?' This uses the company ethics standard. 'If my kids, partner, or faith leader knew of my decision would they be proud of me?' This deals with your personal standards. 'Would the person with whom I'm dealing trust and respect me if they knew what I know or what I'm doing?' This deals with your perception of their standards. 'What does my gut tell me?' You need to have a conscience to have this one mean anything. If the answer to any of these questions is no, then you have ascertained what, to you, is ethical and what is not," said Harris.

Ethical slips happen. There have been instances in a planner's life when he or she keeps a gift a hotelier sends despite company policy. The problem is, these little slips can get bigger and bigger and eventually lead to substantial breaches in ethics.

Hilliard feels that ethical challenges have some relationship to economic challenges. That is, when times are tight, business is scarce, or competition is stiff, people might be inclined to do things they would not normally do to get the business, keep their job, or keep a customer happy. If Something is Legal, Does that Mean it's Ethical? Sandy Biback, CMP, CMM, left the firm she worked for because she was asked to do something that she felt would compromise her ethics, her values, her integrity, and her reputation within the industry. "The company wasn't doing anything illegal, just, for me, unethical," she said. Today, Biback, CMP, CMM is president of Imagination+Meeting Planners Inc., a full service event planning company and an adjunct professor at George Brown College and University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

It got her to thinking: If something is legal, does that mean it is ethical? What are ethics? Do they change from culture to culture, country to country, industry to industry? She posed this question to her students in the event and meetings certificate program at George Brown College. After a heated discussion, a consensus couldn't be reached.

She then posed the question to the MIMlist, (www.mim.com) the meeting planning listserv. She was inundated with personal stories. Some believed that certain thank-you gifts were appropriate for a supplier to give a planner who signed a contract, but anything other than a modest token of appreciation was going too far.

So what is appropriate and what is not? Donating something for the annual holiday party for that planner's organization seemed acceptable. But it was agreed that rigging the outcome of a drawing so that a good client would receive the prize - while not illegal - would cross the ethics line.

Lack of Consensus

"These two sayings, 'The results justify the verdict' and 'The end justifies the means' are behind most of the ethical issues we are faced with today. This is classic rationalization," explained Harris. "There is absolutely no chance in the world that all of us will completely agree upon ethics. Yet, despite the difficulty of reaching a consensus on what is or is not ethical, we all use ethics as a filter through which all our actions and the actions of others are measured." Harris said that he gets his ethical values from the Ten Commandments and the Bible as well as commitments he has made to his family.

The 2005 National Business Ethics Survey, recently released by the Ethics Resource Center (ERC), found that more than half of American workers have observed at least one type of ethical misconduct in the workplace, a slight increase from 2003, despite an increase in workers' awareness of formal ethics programs.

The report went on to state that ethics and compliance programs can and do make a difference. However, the impact they have is related to each organization's culture.

Since everyone has a different set of ethics, a standard must be set that everyone can refer to. Printing a "Code of Ethics" and posting it on a wall or bulletin board is not enough. Codes of ethics must be an outgrowth of the organization's missions, visions, strategies, and values. They need to be actual living documents encouraged and valued at the highest levels, according to the ERC.

Many association codes of ethics include statements like, "We are allowed to accept common courtesies usually associated with customary business practices. They include but are not limited to lunch/dinner with vendors, gifts of small value, gifts of perishable items such as cookies, cakes, or fruit." While having a code of ethics is important, they are worthless unless there are consequences if they aren't followed. Every company should have the courage to uphold its standards, said Harris. Conferon also emphasizes the importance of trust. "Don't work with someone you don't trust is what we teach our team. If everyone did this then the message about the value of being ethical would be clear," Harris said.