Are You Hearing Voices?
Is honesty always the best policy?
That might seem like a strange question coming from someone for whom ethical leadership and good governance are always going to be hills worth dying on.
Of course, we’ve always known that the odd, well-intentioned white lie, “No, those jeans do not make your bottom look big,” is generally harmless, but is there ever a point when complete and total honesty are actually dangerous?
It’s a contentious issue, and one which the multi-award-winning 2014 short film, The Gunfighter, highlights superbly.
If you haven’t ever watched it, do yourself a favour and take a look – just make sure anyone watching with you is over 18, as there are a couple of lines that might have a few sensitive people clutching their pearls.
The Western-themed movie starts with a gunfighter entering a saloon, but that’s where any similarity to a “normal Western” ends. Immediately, his actions are narrated by an unseen voice that’s not only audible to viewers, but also to the other people in the saloon – much to their confusion.
The situation rapidly darkens when the narrator begins revealing the thoughts and hidden actions of each of the characters, causing anger and resentment as, one by one, everyone is exposed as having wronged another character.
As tensions increase, the Gunfighter eventually tries to restore peace by saying, “In a world where our deepest, darkest secrets are unveiled one by one, maybe we’ll stop doing the things we’re ashamed of, and start to embrace the parts of our ourselves that we’re beginning to accept. This could be the beginning of a new Utopia. A society based on fairness and tolerance, where it don’t matter if you’re rich, or poor, or a woman. The voice is showing us the worst side of ourselves, and we need to show it our best.”
It’s a heartfelt narrative which hits home with everyone in the saloon…until the very next moment when the narrator ruins things by revealing that the Gunfighter himself has killed the son of the only innocent person in the room.
The only, and obvious, outcome is shooting, carnage and death.
Which of course, brings us back to my original question – can total honesty do more harm than good?
The film’s director, Eric Kissack, seems to think so.
“I’ve always thought it was important to point out the dangers of complete and total honesty,” he says. “I mean, obviously, in an ideal world we wouldn’t do things that we’re ashamed of. But that world seems vanishingly distant so in the meantime, let’s all just learn to accept a little judicious truth-concealing (lying).”
I disagree. Honesty is only dangerous if the person we’re being honest about has done something harmful or deceitful that they don’t want anyone else to know.
Innocent, ethical people have nothing to hide, which means they have nothing to fear from anyone’s honesty.
I accept, however, that this is easier for me to say than it is to practice in real life.
Just as the characters in The Gunfighter are subjected to a relentless barrage of truth bombs from the mysterious and omniscient Narrator, we as everyday people are constantly battered by voices from our government, our communities, our religious groups and our peers. Somewhere, somehow, in the middle of all those conflicting opinions and advice, we’re expected to make ethical decisions.
All this noise provides a convenient scapegoat. When the voices get too loud, it’s easier to simply throw up our hands and surrender culpability. We might even feel relieved to not have the pressure of free will weighing on us.
But that, dear reader, is unfortunately not how it works.
In law, it’s occasionally possible to defend an individual’s actions because “the voices in their head” told them to commit a crime indicate a mental disorder that renders them “incapable of appreciating the nature and quality of the act or omission or of knowing that it was wrong.”
But my 20-plus years as a forensic investigator have shown me that the people who behave unethically and corruptly know exactly what they’re doing. They have no defence – they know their actions will harm others, but the lure of the self-benefit that comes from them is too strong to resist.
Combine that with the distinct likelihood that, in South Africa at least, you’re very likely to get away with your actions, and it’s easy to see why the voices of the puppet masters drown out all the others.
This is why it’s more important than ever that businesses in South Africa double down on their efforts to combat the corruption that threatens our country’s future.
Tsakani Maluleke, the Auditor-General of South Africa, says, “corruption is becoming more sophisticated, involving multiple role players in related institutions. So, to improve our contribution to the fight against corruption, we must continuously revisit our audit strategies, invest in ongoing training, use sophisticated fraud data analytics and collaborate with other institutions that play distinct roles in the accountability ecosystem – including the judiciary, civil society, law enforcement agencies and higher education institutions.”
She goes on to say that “service delivery failures are happening because of failures in behaviour – and the behaviour of institutions flows entirely from the prevailing culture.”
It’s easy, of course, to stand here and highlight problems. The key issue now is, what can businesses and government enterprises do to proactively and pre-emptively counter corruption?
Sadly, it’s not always as easy as implementing more a more robust checks and balances system, or giving employees additional ethics and anti-corruption training.
There are too many examples of corporate corruption where the paying of bribes, or fines for non-compliance, are seen simply as the cost of doing business.
Global commodities company Glencore is a classic case in point. In 2022, they finally admitted to paying more than $28 million in bribes in five African countries between 2011 and 2016 (including paying off a judge) to guarantee preferential access to oil deals.
At the time, Damian Williams, the US attorney for the southern district of New York, said that “bribery was built into the corporate culture. The tone from the top was clear: whatever it takes.”
The company did have anti-bribery policies in place, but sources say these were “largely ignored because corruption was condoned at a very senior level within the company.”
The fines issued ($1.5billion) were less than Glencore makes in revenue in just 2 days.
The secret then, has to be to not only permanently remove corrupt individuals from positions of influence but also to criminally prosecute them.
As former EOH CEO Stephen van Coller says, “It isn’t good enough to just fire people for bribery and corruption. You do that if you think they’ve done a bad job, not if they’ve done something criminally wrong.”
Without consequences like this, people will then simply resurface in another job, where they’ll repeat the same behaviour.
South Africa would do well to follow the US’s Federal Sentencing Guidelines, whose seven steps constitute an excellent model of an ethics management programme:
- Formulating compliance standards and procedures, such as a code of ethics
- Assigning high-level personnel to provide oversight (such as a compliance officer)
- Taking care when delegating authority
- Installing effective communication standards and procedures (such as training)
- Installing monitoring and reporting mechanisms, and a whistle-blowing procedure
- Enforcing disciplinary mechanisms
- Providing an appropriate response after detection.
Whatever happens, South African businesses need to work together. Nothing stimulates co-operation more than having a common enemy – and the enemy of a successful and prosperous South Africa is corruption.
The World Bank calls it collective action, which it defines as a “collaborative and sustained process of cooperation between stakeholders.”
South Africans can and must work together to forge a future we can all be proud of.