From Ambiguity to Nuance: Ethics in Practice

What’s the right thing to do, and how should educators teach people to think about it? Scholars convened for a series of conversations examining age-old questions at Stanford Graduate School of Business in April, at a moment of profound ethical turmoil in global life.

“The theme for today’s symposium is ‘Teaching Ethics and Responsible Leadership in Business,’” said Interim Dean Peter DeMarzo, as he introduced the second David M. Kreps Symposium, named for Kreps, the Adams Distinguished Professor of Management, Emeritus.

“What does ethical leadership look like amid ethical disagreements?” DeMarzo continued, framing the day’s discussion. “How can we build institutions that foster ethical behavior and align with core values? What responsibilities do businesses have in shaping public policy and governance?”

Three featured speakers — Rebecca Henderson, university professor at Harvard Business School; Adam Galinsky, professor of leadership and ethics at Columbia Business School; and Kwame Anthony Appiah, professor of philosophy and law at New York University — shared distinct perspectives.

A World on Fire

“I’m here because I’m obsessed with climate change,” said Henderson. “And in particular with the question of why we — and when I say we, I mean those of us who are privileged, highly educated, largely white, largely in the West — why we have not done more about this, why we are slowly moving toward catastrophe.”

Traditional business ethics positions individuals within constraints like the fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value, which is thought to align with the public good. But business leaders often have significant latitude to prioritize long-term value, the welfare of others, and socially beneficial aims, Henderson argued. Doing so requires making space for moral intuitions about what’s right and wrong, rather than relying on rational, detached analysis.

“I believe ethics is about the nature of the good, but it’s also structural and it’s also relational and embedded — and we should be teaching our students about all three.”

Teaching Ethics to Leaders — and Followers

Inspiring leaders are made, not born, according to Adam Galinsky. “Like an architect, you can design policies, practices, and processes that guide people toward inspiration.”

Activities like comparative analysis, dialogue, and reflection — as well as the power of personal and real-world examples — effectively challenge students to think clearly about their values, choices, and commitments. “It’s about opening the right channels and closing off the wrong channels,” Galinsky said.

Kwame Anthony Appiah shifted the lens to the ordinary people for whom he writes.

“As The New York Times ethicist, I’ve discovered a lot of people think academic ethics is a matter of solving moral brain teasers,” he said. “In fact, [ethical questions] are messy, they’re tangled in relationships, soaked in history, and sprinkled with uncertainty.”

Fortunately, our moral traditions offer rich guidance, he noted, and more importantly, largely “agree as to what we should do and on what is broadly relevant to deciding what we should do, even where they disagree on the deepest explanations as to why.”

From the Impact of AI to the Question of Power

An open Q&A, moderated by Neil Malhotra, the Edith M. Cornell Professor of Political Economy, afforded the audience the opportunity to see the day’s speakers — and subjects — placed in conversation with one another.

“How do we teach the ethical use and implementation of AI, in particular sitting in Silicon Valley?” asked Maria Frantz, director of the Business, Government & Society Initiative.

In addition to significant personal, political, and societal implications, Appiah suggested that Frantz’s question touched a deeper uncertainty: “Whose job is it to think about this?”

Henderson said she worries not only about unemployment, the diminishment of learning, and the concentration of power in the hands of those that control AI, but how the technology might alter the fabric of our everyday interaction.

“Will our lives be full of entities that know exactly how to manipulate us, and to what end will they do that?” she queried.

Loneliness, Galinsky added, is one of the most corrosive human experiences.

“We’re already starting to see that with AI, the people who most need social interaction are relying on this, and it’s creating an immediate sense of connection, but then a larger sense of disconnection,” he said.

Another question sought to locate the throughline in a curriculum that offers two courses ostensibly in opposition: Paths to Power and Leading with Values.

“Some of the most powerful people I’ve met have been deeply ethical,” Henderson observed. “So that tension, I think, is core to the human experience. And of course, you should be teaching both at the business school, because they’re both real.”

A Shortage of Disagreement

“The single greatest challenge that I face in teaching the core Leading with Values class at the GSB did not come up very much in the conversation here: a shortage of disagreement,” said Ken Shotts, the David S. and Ann M. Barlow Professor of Political Economy, in his closing remarks.

“I think one of the challenges in education, if we’re teaching ethics in business schools, is broadening that set of conversations and having that space for that disagreement — and having people push back and say, ‘Actually, the way that I think most of us are coming at this, there are some problems here.’ I think that’s a crucially important thing.”