My personal/professional organizational communication philosophy and code of ethics that will serve as the foundation of my organizational communication career was eloquently expressed by a former president of the United States in four words: "The buck stops here." Harry Truman's credo is all one needs to be an ethical human being as well as an ethical communications professional.
Simply stated, the essence of this code of ethics is accountability. A whole variety of corollary standards of ethical conduct are intrinsic to this philosophy. They include concepts of honesty, responsibility, reliability, integrity, and character. Each of these abstract moral concepts have consequences for actual behavior.
They are ideals that are very difficult to live up to when one considers that the prime realities of nearly all organizations are money and power, and that these considerations are likely to have corrupted the moral climate of nearly any organization one might encounter to a greater or lesser degree.
That is why codes of conduct are not worth the paper they are written on unless one takes the bottom line of truth as seriously as the traditional bottom line. Honesty is essential to all the other ideal virtues mentioned above. Without it, none of them can exist. A lie destroys honesty, reliability, and responsibility, and corrupts integrity and character.
The great difficulty of this philosophy is that it is well nigh impossible to carry out faithfully and still keep your job. Nothing is more vital to today's corporations, non-profits, religious, media, and governmental organizations, academe, and the military than image, which can be thought of as public perception. And yet nothing is more important to me than truth, including my job. This presents a clash of values, for the simple reason that most organizational images are not truthful.
Think of all of the types of organizations whose communications with the public h...