For nine straight years, nurses continue to rank the highest in the Gallup organization’s annual Honesty and Ethics survey. They would have scored first in the last eleven years if it wasn’t for firefighters snagging the top spot in 2001. The survey results were released on December 3 of this year by the Gallup organization that has been running the annual survey since 1976. “Eighty-one...

In the sports film, Blue Chips Pete Bell is a college basketball coach with an abiding integrity for the game he loves and a passion for his student players to succeed in life. But he’s got one problem – losing. For Coach Bell, losing is a four-letter word that he cannot, will not tolerate. Coming off a losing season, he hits the road to...

It was a story that got very little notice. In fact, I almost overlooked it in a small corner on a back page of The New York Times. “House Ethics Official Steps Down,” (Oct. 15) the headline reads.  “The staff director and chief counsel of the independentOffice of Congressional Ethics in the House, Leo J. Wise, (pictured),  » Read more about: Little Notice,...

Angelo Mozilo, U.S. Representative Charlie Rangel, Tiger Woods, Quarterback Brett Favre, Governor Mark Sanford are just a few who have been involved in ethics-related scandals. “Why do powerful people with so much to lose push so hard to squeeze out a little more gain for themselves?” That’s the great question posed by Wall Street Journal reporter Jason Zweig recently. (Oct. 16). Zweig...

I like this guy. Alright, I’m not much of a groupie, but… if I were ever invited to The White House, the person I’d most like to meet would beNORM! “It’s a dog-eat-dog world and I’m wearing milk bone underwear.” No, not that Norm, but I have no doubt that Norm Eisen, President Obama’s “ethics czar,” probably feels that way most days.  » Read more...

Okay, that’s really a fancy way of saying that I’m going on vacation. Actually, I’m not going much of anywhere. What I will be doing is spending a lot more time, reading, thinking, and writing. I need some time away from a deadline to be able to step back and get some perspective. Looking at this year’s archive, here are a few...

In 1916, at the tender age of 22, Norman Rockwell submitted his first successful cover to the Saturday Evening Post – a magazine that became an essential in homes and business waiting rooms across America. Over the next 47 years, the illustrator produced another 321 original covers for the Post. Of course, what Rockwell succeeded at most was depicting America in a kind...

“The primary purpose of journalism,” write Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel in their book, The Elements of Journalism, “is to provide citizens with information they need to be free and self-governing.” However, the notion of a “free press” has taken on additional consequences with the explosion of information in an electronic age. “Certainly, the notion of the press as a gatekeeper,”...

From time to time, I’ve been asked about ethics resources and there are quite a few good ones out there. The Ethics Resource Center “is a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization, dedicated to independent research that advances high ethical standards and practices in public and private institutions.” The ERC focuses its research in the areas of character education, federal policy, national surveys,  » Read more...

Basketball Coach John Wooden died last week. While Wooden was remembered for his spectacular coaching career at UCLA, what I remember most is his letter to me in 1999 for my book, What Do You Stand For? I had asked Wooden and others to respond to this questionnaire:  What do you stand for; what principles have you lived by?  Describe a ‘moment of...