The ability to make good ethical decisions is based on several important factors. First, employees need to understand how to recognize and analyze ethical situations. The press is full of articles about otherwise good employees who allowed themselves to become trapped in a situation where their ethical choices were poor. With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it is often easy to see where the first steps toward a set of unethical choices occurred. Without the proper training, that perspective was not evident at the time the events began. Proper training that emphasizes the organization's strategy about how it plans to do business helps accomplish this important goal.

The questions to be answered are: (1) where do we want our organization positioned as it relates to doing business with integrity; (2) how do we communicate our position to our employees; and (3) how do we train our people to make good choices when faced with difficult ethical situations.

ethicsLINC approaches the development of our training programs with these difficult questions in mind. We work with your senior management team to understand how you have positioned the company from a business ethics standpoint. After we understand where you are and where you want to be, we develop training materials suitable for your company, which include experiential learning for your employees. Ethics training must include opportunities to grapple with real life ethical issues -- the kind they might face in your organization. Through "hands on" learning, employees become better at recognizing when a particular set of facts might indeed raise an ethical issue. They will also benefit from roundtable discussions with their fellow employees on how to deal with those situations. All of this training is done against the backdrop of what your senior team has determined to be the strategic position of the company, further communicating the importance of your message.