But ethics is not primarily about money; it is about people. You can’t tell employees how important it is to balance work life with family life and then grouse — and even refuse — when someone needs to leave work an hour early to get to a child’s soccer game. You may even know yourself what it feels like to be “empowered” as a manager, only to have the chairman or president micromanage every nagging detail — except that you may be doing the same thing yourself to the people you have theoretically empowered. Do you publicize merit as the only basis for promotion, but elevate the person who strokes you and does you favors? Do you declare equal opportunity as official company policy, but extend it only to one class of people? Do you put up with highly recognized people who, in reality, are taking credit for the work of others?

The gap between the best that is within you and the worst that sometimes emerges is not a matter of being a bad person; it is quite a different thing altogether. It’s just that we do well at the things we pay attention to, and sometimes we haven’t paid much attention to what it means to run an ethical business.

One reason is that there is seldom any easily observable consequence to unethical behavior. To be sure, some consumer affairs group or the IRS may call us to task on a decision that was just plain wrong. But the subtlety of much ethical decision-making is that it has consequences that are long-delayed, and therefore is the most insidious.

The basic issue to address when examining the ethics of what may be considered a questionable decision is to ask: what does making that decision do to the real you? The “real you” is the person who came into the world quite innocent of forces that manipulate, deceive and destroy. The outcome of making ethical decisions — whether they are small or Earth-shaking in their consequences — is a reaffirmation of the essential goodness that each of us was born with.

That’s the bottom line of ethical decision-making — what it does to the maker of those decisions. Today’s business leaders not only face increasingly complex laws but also the prospect of making decisions that technology and globalization have forced upon all of us. Ethical decision-making challenges the kind of people we are, and the kind of people we will become. In the new millennium, we will all have to function honestly in an ever-changing business climate that is often surrounded by uncertainty. The future requires the best each of us has to give, not only for the sake of the prosperity it may bring, but most importantly, for strengthening the character of the people who lead.