Simple is good. At least that's the message we get from countless KISS (keep it simple, stupid!) recommendations we receive over our lifetimes. Complexity is time-consuming, ergo bad. Give me an A+B=C solution and I'll praise your knowledge and efficiency.

I suppose. Except that when it comes to ethics things are far from simple. First, take a look at psychologist James Rest's* "Four Component Model." All four components are necessary if one is to behave morally.

• Moral sensitivity means our ability to recognize that we are being confronted with a moral issue. 
• Moral judgment means our ability to identify the moral course of action 
• Moral motivation is our willingness to do whatever we decided is the right thing to do 
• Moral courage is our perseverance, our ability to move forward even when we face obstacles 

It's possible to get stuck in one of the components. First, we may be blind to the ethical dimensions of a situation (moral sensitivity). We may believe, for instance, that the issue is "just a business one" or is too simple to be considered "moral." Second, we may recognize the morality of the situation but not have the ethical tools to identify the "right answer" (moral judgment). Third, we may know what the "right answer" is but may be unwilling to follow it (moral motivation). Finally, we may be willing to do the right thing but be unable to do so at the last minute (moral behavior).

The next question, therefore, is: What makes us more or less able to go through the four components of morality? Now we turn to the work of Thomas Jones**. Dr. Jones suggested that all four of Rest's components are related to the moral intensity of a situation. In order to estimate the intensity of a situation, we must consider:

• Consequences: How serious is the situation? Can someone get hurt? How badly?
• Social consensus: Does everyone agree that "response behavior x" is good or bad? Is the "right thing to do" something open to significant differences in interpretation?
• Probability of effect: How likely is harm to take place? Is this something so hypothetical and far fetched that we might as well forget about it?
• Temporal immediacy: When are the consequences of the problem likely to take place? Right now? Three generations from now?
• Proximity: How close are the victims to us, psychologically, physically, socially, and culturally? Are they our friends? Do they share our nationality, religion, or another common social identity?
• Concentration of effect: How many people are affected by the situation? How badly will they be affected? Is this something likely to cost a lot of people a tiny bit of discomfort or one person a significant amount of pain and suffering?

According to Jones, we are not likely to pay attention to situations of low moral intensity. For instance, if an employee believes that something has very low consequences and those consequences are very disperse, he/she is unlikely to activate any thoughts of morality. As an example, a person who would ordinarily never steal (not even from a complete stranger) could make a long distance phone call on the company's dime, take home a block of post-its from the office supply cabinet or simply fail to focus on work tasks while at work. A normally ethical CEO might ignore the likely but very far way (200 years from now?) environmental impact of current organizational policies.

Why does this matter? Let me offer a few possible implications of ethical complexity:

• Your ethics interventions may not work. You put together this fantastic leadership ethics training program, full of bells and whistles. Your organization has spent considerable effort developing a set of values, a Code of Ethics, and all sorts of ethical rules. Your employees, however, may get stuck in one of the four morality components (sensitivity, judgment, motivation, behavior). They may also fail to apply the lessons learned to a real situation perceived as irrelevant, ambiguous, improbable, distant, impersonal, or disperse.
• Your ethics interventions may be misdirected. Maybe you focused too much on behavior and forgot that people need to see a problem as moral, to begin with. Maybe you worried about training and failed to realize a serious systemic issue, one which prevents people from doing the right thing even when they want to do so.
• People may become desensitized to ethical issues. Remember the post-its? Well, let's face it - one pad will hardly make a dent on success or failure of the organization. The problem is: We might escalate. If the post-its are ok, then maybe something else is ok too. Ann Tenbrunsel and David Messick*** referred to this as the N+1 rule. We could become progressively immunized against seeing something as ethically problematic.

So, after reading this, tell me: Is simple really good?

I'd love to hear your thoughts: What ethics interventions have you either experienced or implemented in your organization? How have they worked?

I teach Ethics at a graduate leadership program. One of my challenges is to help our leaders understand the impact of lack of fairness. Specifically:

• Do we notice when there are power and resource imbalances?
• How do we react to issues of lack of fairness?
• What type of society would we create if we knew we could land "anywhere" in the social spectrum? 

Of course, these discussions are hardly new. One of my favorite philosophers, John Rawls, argues that a fair society results from a "Veil of Ignorance." This "Veil" forces future society members to make blind decisions, without knowing whether they will be rich or poor, intelligent or unintelligent, members of a top or a lower class. They do not even know their personality traits or abilities. Under those "ignorance" conditions:

• What types of inequalities are reasonable?
• How are resources allocated?

​To help leaders experience inequality, I use a game called "The Kingdom Tycoons." I assign participants to three groups (upper, middle and lower class), provide different resources to each group and then observe the resulting group dynamics.  Here is how you can reproduce the game:

1. First, come up with a way to assign participants to each of the three groups: upper class (I call this group "The Dukes,"  middle class ("The Knights") and lower class ("The Peasants").
2. How do you differentiate? Any game of chance will do.  For instance, you may use a modified (or seriously rigged) game of poker. Each player receives a sealed envelope containing an "initial hand" (five cards) and a varying number of chips. Make sure some players receive better cards and more chips than others. For example, some envelopes may include only Aces or even a Royal Flush.
3. After you differentiate the three groups, send participants to different parts of the room and give them different sets of resources. In my version, we celebrate the accomplishments of the Dukes and shower them with "stuff" (including boxes of donuts and decorations for their table).  The "Peasants"  have basically nothing - the "Knights" are somewhere in between.
4. Next, give participants something to do. Once again, the task is irrelevant and depends on your training theme. In my version, participants are asked to build a prototype of a new kingdom using Lego pieces (and yes, the Dukes by then have far more pieces than the Knights; the Peasants have none whatsoever). I explain such differentiation by the "higher skill" of the poker winners. 
5. Somewhere halfway through the process, give the three groups the opportunity to rewrite the game rules (in my version I tell them to rewrite the "Constitution"). 
6. That's where it gets REALLY interesting. Typically, the Peasants claim for total equality, the Knights ask for a complicated change of rules involving more "mentoring" of the Peasants and more social mobility, and the Dukes want... nothing (duh). 
7. A fair amount of "charity"  often takes place, with Knights pressuring the Dukes to contribute more resources. The game is truly fascinating. In approximately 1 hour I am able to invite rich discussions on opportunity, merit, the role of "luck,"  and... what leaders can and should do about it.

An important disclaimer: This is not a terribly original idea - simulations like the one that I ran "pop up"  under different names and with different scenarios and rules.  As a colleague in the Linked:HR group rightfully pointed out, one could say that I " somewhat" reproduced the scenario pioneered by teacher Jane Elliott in Iowa thirty years ago (for those unfamiliar with Ms. Elliott's work, go to http://www.janeelliott.com/index.htm).

Good luck! If you come up with a different version, how about sharing what you did? Also, let me know what happened!