As the government and public bodies in the UK face ethical scrutiny, we need to see ethics as Buddhists do: starting with individuals and matter of training
The Committee for Standards in Public Life, which reported again this week, has a role rather like that of a religious counsellor. Set up by John Major in 1994 in the ’Back to Basics’ era, it aimed to restore trust in public bodies by advocating seven principles that should guide their work. The fundamental one is selflessness, meaning that ‘holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest’, rather than their own self interest or that of their organisation. The other six principles are integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership.
Controversies are currently raging around the role of leaders in government and the BBC, and bodies like the police. But beyond the issues of the day, the Committee’s principles raise a more fundamental question: how can we create a more ethical culture, in organisations and in society?
The Buddhist approach starts with individuals. An organisation can mandate and regulate certain kinds of behaviour, but I can only see honesty and integrity as, at root, human qualities. Any meaningful professional ethics, I think, need to be grounded in the practice of personal ethics.
That word ‘practice’ is important for Buddhists. Ethics in Buddhism are a ‘training’, suggesting that we learn to be ethical in small daily things like addressing our little evasions and unkindnesses. Practising in that way creates the good habits that eventually form a character and an ethical sensibility that’s more help when larger dilemmas arise than just the rulebook alone.
If that sounds unrealistic, an inspiring example for me has been a programme for senior civil servants in the Welsh government using mindfulness, along with other tools, to change the collective culture. If you want an accountable organisation, they believe, you need a culture of open communication. If you want fairness, you need to help people recognise the unconscious biases that shape our attitudes. And we need the space that mindfulness brings to recognise what’s happening.
This practice-based view of ethics doesn’t remove the need for regulation, but the trust that needs to be restored is, to a large degree, a matter of feeling. ‘Do not trust the untrustworthy,’ warned the Buddha. Trust instead the ‘one with whom your mind is at home’. That’s a way of speaking about the instinctive response we all feel when we encounter a person of deep Integrity. You can’t mandate that, and you also can’t fake it.
