Is there any point in trying to turn out ethical business school graduates? Writing in the FT, Mary Gentile, a former Harvard Business School teacher, concluded that there wasn’t. Indeed, she said, after years of working in the field: “I began to wonder if it was even ethical to try to teach the subject.”
The problem was two-fold. First, the students who took the ethical position in class risked appearing unsophisticated. Those who argued against them seemed smart and worldly-wise.
Second, the ethical problems discussed pitted right against right – students had to choose between two options, neither of them illegal or entirely immoral. She feared this encouraged students to question whether ethical behaviour was possible in the first place.