I am reading Maureen O’Hara‘s book, Something for Nothing: Arbitrage and ethics on Wall Street. Professor O’Hara is a financial economist at Cornell University. In her book she explains how modern finance works and what led to many of the contemporary ethical scandals of Wall Street. I’ll probably have more to say about the book after I finish it, but I enjoyed this tidbit:
Some people want to stay as close to the legal line as possible, while remaining on the “right” side of that line. However, Professor O’Hara says, “laws reflect moral standards, and over time the laws change to reflect what is acceptable to society. … But that also highlights why a strategy of being exactly on the line of legality is a poor business practice; when the lines shift, you go from being a weasel to being a felon, even when you have done nothing differently.”
Adopting an ethical standard is a higher one than merely following the letter of the law. So being on the right side of the ethical line, even close to it, can keep you from falling into the “weasel” category. But adopting a strategy of staying close to the ethical line can cause problems. There are differing ethical perspectives, and these don’t always agree or even provide clear-cut answers. Therefore, if you really want to follow a strategy of ethical conduct, it is best to stay as far away from the ethical line as possible–if there really is such a thing as an ethical line anyway.
Harvey James 