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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (23051)	12/20/1998 12:17:00 AM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 67261

Ah, I see! He misled them so much that they gave him a standing ovation after he admitted ..... You may not have been exposed to the fundamentalists but this is part of the script. They love the sinner who confesses. It doesn't matter if you are good or bad, just so long as you are under the thumb. Livingston was obviously tired of the script which is why he added a resignation (after a convienient period to bolster his pension). TP

To: sea_biscuit who wrote (23051)	12/20/1998 9:32:00 AM
From: Les H	Respond to of 67261

Bosses Beware When Bending the Truth By JEFFREY L. SEGLIN Lying has consequences. Dire ones. That became all too clear last week, as the president, accused of swearing to a lie, found his credibility shattered and his every move and motive suspect. What applies to political leaders applies equally to business leaders. When Bill Gates appears to dance around the truth under oath in the Microsoft antitrust trial, his credibility, too, takes blows. But actions of admired leaders like Gates and Clinton can do damage far beyond their own reputations. When a culture of lying with impunity is perceived to have taken hold at the top, it bodes ill for behavior in the rest of an organization. "As long as there's this raging ambiguity and there's no accountability, people will start generating more and more lax responses to morally ambiguous situations," said Steven Berglas, a management consultant and a clinical psychologist at the Harvard Medical School. "Most people will start lowering standards for what's tolerable. And that manifests itself in people going along with what's being reinforced. People are going to lie for expediency." Now we are not talking here about a failure to tell every bit of the truth every waking minute, a feat that no mortal manages. Success in modern life is next to impossible without the maneuvering room afforded by a bit of calculated vagueness here and a strategically bitten tongue there. "Not telling the full truth is different from outright lying," said Joseph L. Badaracco Jr., professor of business ethics at the Harvard Business School and author of "Defining Moments: When Managers Must Choose Between Right and Right" (Harvard Business School Press, 1997). "If you're going to run a big company or run the country, you can't put all your cards on the table; that's simply naive. "Life is a series of different games," he continued, "and you sort of play by the rules" when it comes to levels of candor in different circumstances. Even fresh-faced business school students appear to distinguish between posturing and outright lying. In a recent survey at Ohio State and Harvard, MBA students were asked to rate from 1 (bad) to 7 (good) the ethical appropriateness of various negotiating tactics. The students gave a rating of 5.84 to "making an opening demand that is far greater than what one really hopes to settle for." But they gave a much lower score, 1.99, to "intentionally misrepresenting factual information to your opponent in order to support your negotiating arguments or position." There are also times when telling the whole truth is simply cruel, as when a doctor can choose whether to tell a dying patient in clinical detail how his health will decay. "There's great room for discretion, for knowing when not to speak," said Sissela Bok, author of "Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life" (Vintage Books, 1989). But discretion was not the better part of Gates' or Clinton's valor. Spinning or denying uncomfortable facts and professing not to understand the definitions of simple English words -- Gates wondered what "concerned" meant, and Clinton famously construed "is" -- were more their pattern. "From a managerial point of view, you should have a strong prejudice toward being clear, direct and honest," because lying "becomes a bad habit," Badaracco said. "You might get caught. You set a bad example. The people who work with you probably aren't dumb; they'll copy what you do." Can either Clinton or Gates expect the whole truth from the people who work for them? A leadership policy of "Do as I say, not as I do" cuts no ethical ice. And it probably wouldn't work anyway. Once a leader blurs rules about what is acceptable -- say, during sworn testimony on national TV -- then no one knows the boundaries any more. Many in the rank and file will conclude that they are free to, and perhaps ought to, emulate the boss. Alas, hubris often blinds powerful leaders and their followers to the seriousness of the damage. In the Clinton case, politicians fret most about the power calculus of impeachment and the presidency; in the Microsoft case, executives worry most about competition, innovation and monopoly power. But isn't there something much more important to fear -- that each sworn lie by an admired leader will make us one measure more a nation of liars? Jeffrey L. Seglin is a visiting fellow at Harvard University's Center for the Study of Values in Public Life. His column on business ethics will appear the third Sunday of each month. E-mail may be sent to righthngnytimes.com.