rotmanmagazine.ca / 73Ting Zhang is an Adjunct Assistant Professor
of Management at Columbia Business School.
Pinar Fletcher is a behavioural scientist who
received her doctorate from Harvard Business
School. Francesca Gino is the Tandon Fam-
ily Professor of Business Administration at
Harvard Business School. Max Bazerman is
the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business
Administration at Harvard Business School
and Co-Director of the Center for Public Lead-
ership at the Harvard Kennedy School. This article is based on their paper,
“Reducing Bounded Ethicality: How to Help Individuals Notice and Avoid
Unethical Behaviour”, which was published in the journal Organizational
Dynamics and can be downloaded online.Most people don’t notice when someone answers a slightly
different question from the one that was asked.
two or more sources. The idea is that one can be more confident
with a result if different methods lead to the same result.
When asking multiple sources the same question, are the
answers congruent with one another, or do they conflict? For ex-
ample, consider the scenario that you are concerned a supplier is
using child labour. If multiple sources reveal conflicting numbers
about the number of employees working at the company, you
have reason to be more suspicious. Inconsistency is often a sign
that suspicion is warranted.
- ATTEND TO ‘ARTFUL DODGES’
When people are asked questions that could reveal the unethi-
cal nature of a situation, they often give ‘non-answers’ in order to
deflect attention away from the issue of concern. Such ‘dodges’
are signs that suspicions are warranted. For example, an indi-
vidual who does not want others to know about the use of child
labour may direct discussion to the quality of products or mate-
rials when asked about the low cost of labour. Research shows
that individuals tend to not notice when others are answering a
slightly different question from the one that was asked. One way
to detect artful dodges is to remember the original question and
to think critically about whether the answer provided truly ad-
dresses the focal question. - LEAVE MORE TIME TO DECIDE
After gathering all relevant information, leaving time to decide
can prevent you from overlooking critical information. In a fa-
mous experiment, theological seminary students were asked
to give a lecture. Some of the priests were told that they needed
to hurry in order to arrive at the building on time, whereas oth-
ers were told they had plenty of time. On their way over to the
lecture, all of the priests passed by a man slumped over, who ap-
peared to be in need of medical attention. The priests who were
not in a rush were more likely to help the man; while those in a
rush were more likely to pass by without even noticing him. Time
constraints proved to be an even bigger deterrent of helping be-
haviour than the content of the talk: Some of these seminary stu-
dents were on their way to give a talk on being a Good Samaritan.
As this study indicates, when people are in a rush, they a) do not
have enough time to do any additional investigative work, and b)
fail to notice even when obvious information is in front of them.
In closing
By embracing a vigilant mindset as a ‘default state’, managers in
any industry can develop a keen ability to notice unethical be-
haviour. In our view, this is a critical step towards reducing both
bounded ethicality and bounded awareness in modern organiza-
tions.