The Encyclopedia of Ethical Failure is a remarkable (and very funny) exercise in corporate honesty, says Robert Jeffery
Celebrate your mistakes. It’s one of the fundamentals of every management self-help book on the market (and there are thousands of the things). Holding up our shortcomings makes us appear more human and facilitates self-development. And yet, in many of the interviews I’ve conducted with business leaders, they have either been bland and evasive when talking about their failings, or a timorous press officer has made a panicky phone call afterwards to try and remove any trace of imperfection from their replies.
So hurrah for the improbable candour of the US Department of Defense, which is letting all its peccadilloes out of the bag at once in the marvelously titled Encyclopedia of Ethical Failures, a catalogue of the myriad ways in which staff and contractors have been found wanting. Quite simply, it’s a list of every transgression recorded in the department, with full, gruesome details – and it’s out there for everyone to read.
The book (a Word doc, in fact, available as a free download and first publicised via the Freakonomics website) is a gift that keeps on giving. The sub-titles alone are gold: “Taking a Blackhawk out for lunch”, “All-expenses-paid bachelor pad with maid service” or “Using government vehicle to ‘chill out’”. Between its pages are salacious or downright tragic tales of fraud, bribery, conflict of interest and, inevitably, enough sexual malfeasance to make EL James blush.
Much of it is idiotic, like the federal employee who tried to sell office computers (stamped “Property of US Government”) at a yard sale, or the group of senior officials whose “religious observance” absences coincided with major golf tournaments. A departmental director went out to a “swanky restaurant” courtesy of a supplier tendering for a large contract, only to be seated at the next table to a Washington Post reporter, who splashed the story on the front page. An offshore safety inspector was treated to a night with a “lady of dubious morals” every time he referred needless maintenance work to his own brother-in-law (he still tried to argue it wasn’t a kickback).
Much of the rest is simply beyond parody. Who could fail to admire the chutzpah of the employees jailed for taking kickbacks to order (literal) red tape? Or the naval officer who issued a fake death notice to extricate himself from an extramarital affair? Not to mention the agents who billed false expenses for attending an ethics conference.
Of course, the Department can get away with it because its sheer scale obscures many of the miscreants. In the average business, it would be all too obvious it was Sandra from marketing who was putting stationery on eBay. But even if we can’t follow suit, we can admire from afar – and the good news is they’re bringing out an updated version next year.