Business Ethics Session: “Did You Lose Your Faith in the Parking Lot?”
J. Clyde Wills (Greenwich Time, 6 March 2004)

GREENWICH, Conn. — “Who here considers themselves unethical?” asked David Miller of a roomful of corporate executives. “Show of hands?”

No hands went up.

As guest speaker at the Greenwich Executive Breakfast Series yesterday, Miller addressed business ethics in the first of a three-part series on “Faith and Ethics in the Workplace.”

“There is a deep yearning in the business world that business leaders are trying to make sense of it all,” Miller said.

An ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church, Miller spent 16 years in the business world before pursuing theology. He is now executive director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture and assistant professor of business ethics at Yale, teaching a class at Yale Divinity School, “Business Ethics: Succeeding Without Selling Your Soul.”

“We want to give chief executives a language to acknowledge faith in the workplace,” said Richard Murphy of Greenwich, a management consultant and organizer of the event. “Some people leave their faith in the parking lot.”

When ethical lapses bring down large corporations that in turn bring down large accounting firms, ethics need to be re-examined, Miller said.

“There is a laundry list of high-profile corporate failures over the past couple of years,” he said.

People facing criminal indictments and ruined lives are probably good people, Miller said. Individuals such as Kenneth Lay or Martha Stewart may have attended seminars such as this, he added.

The starting point of ethics is aiming for truth, Miller said. He asked his audience: What are your resign lines? What lines will you not cross? Where are your no-go zones?

“There is a fine line between managing the numbers and manipulating the numbers,” Miller said.

Many business people find a disconnect between their personal values and the organization for which they work, Miller said. For many businesses, it is the disconnect of what is ethical and what is legal. Faith and work are often compartmentalized, he said, and not allowed to interact.

“I feel that most people don’t talk about their faith. It’s a ‘private matter’ in the Northeast,” said Morgan Mitchell, a real estate broker in Greenwich. “It’s too bad. My faith is such a joy.”

The Hebrew word Avodah not only means worship, Miller said, but also means work and service. For Miller, all of those are interconnected.

Miller keeps a shard of glass from the World Trade Center on his desk to remind him of the cloudiness of ethics. Once a clear pane of a massive window, the glass is now an opaque fragment.

“I keep this on my desk to help keep me ethically fresh,” he said.

Further sessions of Faith and Ethics in the Workplace will be from 7 to 8:15 April 2 and May 7 at the Indian Harbor Yacht Club, 710 Steamboat Road, Greenwich. All are welcome.