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Goodmanagers oftenmake unethical decisions-and don'teven know it. How {Un)ethical Are You?

by Mahzarin R. Banaji, Max H. Bazerman, and Dolly Chugh ~ ~'"~r<.J2-' -'«:io ~2'"8<.JZIV>::J'"=>Q.

8r~V> V>WZVi=>'"Cl'"~«r ~19f0­r<.J2 ~u Answertrue or false:"I am an ethical man­ ager." If you answered "true,"here's an uncom­ fortable fact:You're probably not.Most of us believe that we are ethical and unbiased. We imagine we'regooddecision makers,able to objectively size up ajob candidate or aventure deal andreach afair and rational conclusion that's inour, and our organization's, bestinter­ ests. Butmore than two decades of research confirms that, in reality,most of usfall woe­ fully short of our inflated self-perception.

We're deluded bywhat Yale psychologist David Armor callstheillusion of objectivity, the notion thatwe're free of thevery biases we're soquick to recognize in others. What's more, theseunconscious, or implicit, biases can becontrary to our consciously held, ex­ plicitbeliefs. We maybelieve withconfidence and conviction that ajob candidate's racehas no bearing on our hiring decisions or that we'reimmune to conflicts of interest. But psy­ chological researchroutinely exposescounter­ intentional, unconscious biases.Thepre va- HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003 lence of thesebiases suggests that eventhe most well-meaning personunwittingly allows unconscious thoughts and feelings toinfluence seemingly objectivedecisions. Theseflawed judgments areethically problematic andun­ dermine managers' fundamental work-to re­ cruit and retain superior talent,boosttheper­ formance of individuals and teams, and collaborate effectivelywithpartners. This article explores fourrelated sources of unintentional unethicaldecisionmaking:im­ plicit forms of prejudice, bias that favorsone's own group, conflict of interest, andatendency to overclaim credit.Because weare not con­ sciously aware of thesesources of bias,they often cannot beaddressed bypenalizing peo­ ple fortheir bad decisions. Norarethey likely to becorrected throughconventional ethics training. Rather,managers mustbring anew type of vigilance to bear. Tobegin, this re­ quires letting go of the notion that our con­ scious attitudes alwaysrepresent what we think theydo.It also demands that weaban­ don our faith in our ownobjectivity and our PAGE 3 How (Un)ethical Are You? Mahzarin R. Banaji isthe Richard Clarke Cabot Professor ofSocial Ethics inthe department of psychology at Harvard University and the Carol K Pforzheimer Professor atHarvard's Rad­ cliffe Institute for Advanced Study in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Max H. Bazerman isthe Jesse Isidor Straus Professor ofBusiness Administration at Harvard Business School in Boston. Dolly Chugh, a Harvard Business School MBA, isnow adoctoral candi­ date inHarvard University's joint pro­ gram in organizational behavior and social psychology. PAGE 4 ability to befair; In the following pages,we will offerstrategies that canhelp managers recognize thesepervasive, corrosive,uncon­ scious biases and reduce their impact. Implicit Prejudice:

BiasThat Emerges/rom Unconscious Beliefs Mostfair-minded peoplestrive to judgeothers according to their merits, but our research shows how often people instead judgeaccord­ ing to unconscious stereotypes and attitudes, or "implicitprejudice." What makes implicit prejudice so common and persistent is that it is rooted in the fundamental mechanics of thought. Early on, we learn to associate things that commonly go together and expect them to inevitably coexist: thunder and rain,forin­ stance, or gray hair and old age. This skill-to perceive and learn from associations-often serves us well.

But, of course, our associations onlyreflect approximations of the truth; they are rarely applicable to every encounter. Raindoesn't al­ ways accompany thunder, and the young can also gogray. Nonetheless, becauseweauto­ matically makesuchassociations to help us or­ ganize our world, wegrow to trust them, and they canblind us to those instances inwhich the associations are not accurate-when they don't alignwith our expectations.

Because implicitprejudice arisesfrom the ordinary and unconscious tendency to make associations, itis distinct from conscious forms of prejudice, suchasovert racism or sexism.

This distinction explainswhypeople whoare free from conscious prejudice may still harbor biases and actaccordingly. Exposed to images that juxtaposeblack men and violence,portray women assex objects, imply that the physi­ cally disabled arementally weak and the poor arelazy, even the most consciously unbiased person is bound to make biasedassociations:

These associations play out in the workplace just asthey do anywhereelse. In the mid-199OS, TonyGreenwald, aprofes­ sor ofpsychology atthe University ofWashing­ ton, developed an experimental toolcalled the Implicit Association Test(IA T) to study uncon­ scious bias.Acomputerized version of the test requiressubjects to rapidlyclassify words and imagesas"good" or "bad." Usingakeyboard, test takers must make split-second "good/bad" distinctions betweenwordslike''love,'' "joy," "pain," and "sorrow" and atthe same timesort images of faces that are (depending on the bias inquestion) black or white,young or old,fat or thin, and soon. The testexposes implicit biases by detecting subtleshifts in reaction time that can occur when test takersarerequired to pair different sets of words and faces.Subjects who consciously believe that they have no negative feelings toward, say,black Americans or the elderly arenevertheless likely to beslower to associate elderly or blackfaceswith the "good" words than they are to associate youthfulor white faceswith"good" words.

Since 1998, when Greenwald, BrianNosek, and Mahzarin Banaji put the IATonline, peo­ plefrom around the world have taken over 2.5 million tests,confirming and extending the findings of more traditional laboratory experi­ ments. Bothshow implicit biases to be strong and pervasive. (Formore information on the IAT, see the sidebar "AreYouBiased?").

Biases arealso likely to be costly. In con­ trolled experiments, psychologists LaurieRud­ man at Rutgers and Peter Glick at Lawrence University havestudied how implicit biases may work to excludequalified peoplefrom certain roles.Oneset ofexperiments examined the relationshipbetweenparticipants' implicit gender stereotypes and their hiringdecisions.

Those holding stronger implicitbiaseswere less likely to select aqualified woman who ex­ hibited stereotypically ''masculine''personality qualities, suchasambition or independence, for a job requiring stereotypically "feminine" qualities, suchasinterpersonal skills.Yetthey would selectaqualified man exhibiting these same qualities. Thehirers' biasedperception was that the woman was lesslikely to be s0­ cially skilled than the man, though their quali­ fications were in fact the same.These results suggest that implicit biases may exactcosts by subtly excluding qualifiedpeoplefrom the veryorganizations that seek their talents.

Legal casesalsoreveal the realcosts of im­ plicit biases, both economic and social. Con­ sider Price Waterhouse v.Hopkins. Despite log­ ging more billable hours than her peers, bringing in $25 million to the company, and earning the praise of her clients, Ann Hopkins was turned down for partner, and she sued. The details of the case reveal that her evalua­ tors were explicitly prejudiced in their atti­ tudes. Forexample, they had commented that Ann "overcompensated forbeing awoman" HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003 and needed a"course at charm school." But perhaps more damning from alegal stand­ point was blunt testimony fromexperimental research. Testifying as an expertwitness for the defense, psychology professorSusanFiske, now at Princeton University, argued that the potentialforbiased decision making isinherent in asystem in which a person has"solo" sta­ tus-that is,asystem in which the person is the only one of akind (the only woman, the onlyAfrican-American, the only person with a disability, and the like). Judge Gerhard Gesell concluded that "a far more subtle process [than the usualdiscriminatory intent]isin­ volved" in the assessments made of Ann Hop­ kins, and she won both in a lower court and in the Supreme Court in what isnow alandmark case in discrimination law.

Likewise, the 1999 case of Thomas v.Kodak demonstrates that implicit biases can be the basisforrulings. Here, the court posed the question of "whether the employer con­ sciously intended to base the evaluations on race or simply did so because of unthinking stereotypes or bias." The court concluded that plaintiffs can indeed challenge "subjective evaluations whichcouldeasily mask covert or unconscious racediscrimination." Although courts arecareful not to assign responsibility easily for unintentional biases, thesecases demonstrate the potential forcorporate liabil- Are Yon Biased? ity that such patterns of behaviorcouldunwit­ tingly create. In-Group Favoritism: Bias That Favors YourGroup Think about some ofthe favors you have done in recent years, whether for afriend, arela­ tive, or a colleague. Have you helped someone get auseful introduction, admission to a school, or ajob? Most of us are glad to help out with such favors. Not surprisingly, we tend to do more favors for those weknow, and those we know tend to be likeourselves: peo­ ple who share our nationality, socialclass, and perhaps religion, race,employer, or alma mater. Thisallsounds rather innocent. What's wrong with asking your neighbor, the univer­ sity dean, to meet with acoworker's son? Isn't itjust being helpful to recommend aformer sororitysisterfora job or to talk to your banker cousin when afriend from church gets turned down for ahome loan?

Few people set out to exclude anyone through suchacts of kindness. But when those in the majority or those in power allocate scarce resources (suchasjobs, promotions, and mortgages) to people just like them, they effec­ tively discriminate againstthose who are dif­ ferent from them. Such"in-group favoritism" amounts to giving extracredit for group mem­ bership. Yetwhile discriminating againstthose How (Un)ethical AreYou? Are you willing tobetthatyou feel the same way toward European-Americans asyou do towardAfrican-Americans? How about women versusmen?Orolder people versus younger ones?Think twicebefore you take that bet. Visit implicit.harvard.edu or www. tolerance.org/hidden_bias toexamineyour unconscious attitudes.

The Implicit Association Testsavailable on these sitesreveal unconscious beliefs by askingtakerstomake split-second associa­ tions between wordswithpositive or nega­ tive connotations andimages representing different types ofpeople.Thevarious tests on these sitesexpose the differences~rthe alignment-between testtakers' conscious and unconscious attitudestowardpeopleof different races,sexual orientation, orphysi­ cal characteristics. Datagathered fromover HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003 2.5 milliononlinetestsandfurther research tells usthat unconscious biasesare:· widely prevalent. At least 75% oftest tak­ ers show animplicit biasfavoring the young, therich, andwhites.

robust. Themere conscious desi renotto be biased doesnoteliminate implicitbias.

contrary to conscious intention. Al­ thoughpeopletendtoreport littleorno conscious bias against African-Americans, Arabs, Arab-Americans, Jews,gaymen, lesbians, orthe poor, theyshow substan­ tial biases onimplicit measures.

different in degree depending on group status.Minority groupmembers tendto show less implicit preference fortheir own groupthan majoritygroupmembers show fortheirs. Forexample, African­ Americans reportstrong preference for their group onexplicit measures but show relatively lessimplicit preference in thetests. Conversely, whiteAmericans re­ porta low explicit biasfortheir groupbut a higher implicit bias.

• consequential. Those who showhigher lev­ elsofbias onthe IAT are also likely tobe­ have inways that aremore biased inface­ to-face interactions with members ofthe group theyarebiased against and inthe choices theymake, such ashiring decisions.

• costly. Research currently underway in ourlabsuggests that implicit biasgener­ ates a"stereotype tax"-negotiators leave money on the tablebecause biases cause them to missopportunities to learn about their opponent andthus cre­ ate additional valuethrough mutually beneficial trade-offs. PAGES How (Un)ethical Are You? Wouldyou be willing to riskbeing in the group disadvantaged by your own decision? PAGE 6 who aredifferent isconsidered unethical,help­ ing people close to us isoften viewed favor­ ably. Think about the number of companies that explicitly encourage this byoffering hir­ ing bonuses to employees whorefer their friends for job opportunities.

But consider the finding that banks in the United Statesaremore likely to denyamort­ gage application fromablack person than from a white person, evenwhen the applicants are equally qualified Thecommon viewhas been that banks arehostile to African-Americans.

While this may be true ofsome banks and some loan officers, socialpsychologist DavidMessick has argued that in-group favoritism ismore likely to be at the root of such discriminatory lending. Awhite loanofficer may feelhopeful or lenient toward an unqualified whiteappli­ cant while following the bank's lending stan­ dards strictly with an unqualified blackappli­ cant. In denying the black applicant's mortgage, the loanofficer may not beexpressing hostility toward blacksso much asfavoritism toward whites. It'sasubtle but crucial distinction.

The ethical costisclear and should be rea­ son enough to address the problem. But such inadvertent biasproduces an additional effect: It erodes the bottom line.Lenders whodis­ criminate in this way, forexample, incur bad­ debt costs they could haveavoided if their lending decisions weremore objective. They also may findthemselves exposed to damaging publicity or discrimination lawsuits if the skewedlending pattern ispublicly revealed. In adifferent context,companies may pay areal cost formarginal hires who wouldn'thave made the grade but for the sympathetic hiring manager swayed by in-groupfavoritism.

In-group favoritism istenacious when mem­ bership confersclearadvantages, as itdoes,for instance, among whites and other dominant social groups. (It may be weaker or absent among people whosegroupmembership of­ fers little societal advantage.) Thusforawide array of managerial tasks-from hiring, firing, and promoting to contracting services and forming partnerships-qualified minoritycan­ didates aresubtly and unconsciously discrimi­ nated against,sometimes simplybecause they are in the minority: Thereare not enough of them to counter the propensity forin-group fa­ voritism inthe majority. Overclaiming Credit Bias That Favors You It'sonly natural forsuccessful people to hold positive views about themselves. But many studiesshow that the majority of peoplecon­ sider themselves aboveaverage on ahost of measures, from intelligence to driving ability.

Business executives are no exception.We tend to overrate our individual contribution to groups,which,bluntly put, tends to lead to an overblown sense of entitlement. Webecome the unabashed, repeated beneficiaries of this unconscious bias, and the more wethink only of our own contributions, the lessfairly we judge others with whom we work.

Lab research demonstrates this mostper­ sonal of biases. AtHarvard, EugeneCaruso, Nick Epley, and MaxBazerman recentlyasked MBA students in studygroups to estimate what portion of their group's workeach had done. The sum ofthe contribution by allmem­ bers, of course, must add up to 100%. But the researchers found that the totalsforeach study group averaged 139%. In arelated study, Caruso and his colleagues uncovered rampant overestimates byacademic authors of their contribution to sharedresearch projects.

Sadly, but not surprisingly, the more the sum of the total estimated groupeffortexceeded 100% (in other words, the more credit each person claimed), the less the parties wanted to collaborate inthe future.

Likewise in business, claiming too much credit can destabilize alliances.When each party in astrategic partnership claims too much creditforits own contribution and be­ comes skeptical about whether the other is doing itsfair share, they both tend to reduce their contributions to compensate. This has ob­ vious repercussions for the joint venture'sper­ formance. Unconscious overclaiming can be expected to reduce the performance and longevity of groups.withinorganizations, just as itdimin­ ished the academic authors'willingness to col­ laborate. Itcan also take atoll on employee commitment. Think about how employees perceive raises.Mostare not sodifferent from the children at LakeWobegon, believing that they,too, rank in the upper half of their peer group. But many necessarily get pay increases that arebelow the average. If an employee learns of a colleague's greater compensation­ whilehonestly believing that he himselfis HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003 more deserving-resentment maybenatural.

At best, his resentment mighttranslate intore­ duced commitment and performance. At worst, he may leave the organization that, it seems,doesn't appreciate his contribution. Conflict of Interest Bias That Favors ThoseWhoCan Benefit You Everyone lmows that conflict of interest can lead tointentionally corruptbehavior. Butnu­ merous psychological experimentsshowhow powerfully suchconflicts canunintentionally skew decision making. (For an examination of the evidence in one business arena,seeMax Bazerman, GeorgeLoewenstein, and Don Moore'sNovember 2002 HBRarticle, "Why Good Accountants Do BadAudits.") Theseex­ periments suggest that the workworld isrife with situations in which suchconflicts lead honest, ethicalprofessionals to unconsciously make unsound and unethical recommenda­ tions. Physicians, forinstance, faceconflicts of in­ terest whentheyaccept payment forreferring patients intoclinical trials.While, surely, most physicians consciously believe that theirrefer­ rals are the patient's bestclinical option, how do they lmow that the promise ofpayment did not skewtheirdecisions? Similarly, many law­ yers earn feesbased on their clients' awards or settlements. Sincegoing to trial isexpensive and uncertain, settling out of courtisoften an attractive optionfor the lawyer. Attorneys may consciously believe that settlingis intheir clients'bestinterests. Buthow canthey beob­ jective, unbiased judges under thesecircum­ stances? Research donewithbrokerage houseana­ lysts demonstrates howconflict of interest can unconsciously distortdecision making. Asur­ vey of analysts conducted by the financialre­ search service FirstCallshowed that during a period in 2000 when the Nasdaq dropped 60%, fully 99% of brokerage analysts'client recommendations remained"strongbuy," ''buy,'' or ''hold.'' Whataccounts for this dis­ crepancy between what washappening and what wasrecommended? The answermaylie in asystem that fosters conflicts of interest. A portion of analysts' pay isbased on brokerage firm revenues. Some firms eventieanalysts' compensation to the amount of business the analysts bring in fromclients, givinganalysts MARV ARDBUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003 an obvious incentive to prolong and extend their relationships withclients. But to assume that during this Nasdaq freefallallbrokerage house analysts wereconsciously corrupt, milk­ ing their clients to exploit this incentive sys­ tem,defies common sense.Surely there were some bad apples. Buthow much more likely it isthat most of these analysts believed their recommendations weresound and in their cli­ ents'bestinterests. Whatmany didn't appreci­ ate was that the built-in conflict of interest in their compensation incentivesmade itimpos­ sible for them to see the implicit bias in their own flawedrecommendations. Trying Harder Isn't Enough As companies keepcollapsing intofinancial scandal and ruin, corporations areresponding with ethics-training programsformanagers, and many of the world's leading business schools havecreated new courses and chaired professorships in ethics. Many of theseefforts focus on teaching broadprinciples of moral philosophy to help managers understand the ethicalchallenges they face.

We applaud theseefforts, but we doubt that awell-intentioned, just-try-harderapproach will fundamentallyimprove the quality of ex­ ecutives'decisionmaking.To do that,ethics training must be broadened to include what is now lmown abouthow our minds workand must expose managers directly to the uncon­ scious mechanisms that underlie biaseddeci­ sion making. And itmust providemanagers with exercises andinterventions that canroot out the biases that lead to bad decisions.

Managers can make wiser, moreethical de­ cisions ifthey become mindful of theiruncon­ scious biases. But howcanweget atsomething outside our conscious awareness? By bringing the conscious mind to bear.Justas the driver of amisaligned cardeliberately counteractsits pull, socan managers developconscious strate­ gies to counteract thepull oftheir unconscious biases. What's required isvigilance-continual awareness ofthe forces that can cause decision making to veer from itsintended courseand continual adjustments to counteract them.

Those adjustments fallinto three general cate­ gories: collecting data,shaping the environ­ ment, andbroadening the decision-making process.

Collect data. The first step to reducing un­ conscious bias isto collect data to revealits How (Un)ethical Are You?

PAGE 7 How (Un)ethical Are You? Areyour company's high achievers all castfrom the same mold? PAGE 8 presence. Often, the data willbecounterintui­ tive. Consider many people's surprise to learn of their own gender and racialbiases on the lAT.Why the surprise? Because most of us trust the "statistics" our intuition provides. Better data areeasily, but rarely, collected.

One way to get those data isto examine our decisions in asystematic way.

Remember the MBA study groups whose participants overestimated their individual contributions to the group effort so that the to­ tals averaged 139%? When the researchers asked group members to estimate what each of the other members' contributions were be­ fore claiming their own, the total fell to 121%. Thetendency to claim too much credit still persisted, but this strategy of "unpacking" the work reduced the magnitude ofthe bias. In en­ vironments characterized by"Ideserve more than you're giving me" claims, merely asking team members to unpack the contributions of others beforeclaiming their own share of the pot usually aligns claims more closelywith what's actually deserved. As this example dem­ onstrates, suchsystematic audits of both indi­ vidual and group decision-making processes can occur even as the decisionsarebeing made. Unpacking isasimple strategy that manag­ ers should routinely use to evaluate the fair­ ness of their own claims within the organiza­ tion. But they can also apply itin any situation where team members or subordinates may be overclaiming. For example, in explaining a raise that an employee feelsisinadequate, a manager shouldask the subordinate not what he thinks he alonedeserves but what he con­ siders an appropriate raiseaftertaking into ac­ count each coworker's contribution and the pool availablefor pay increases. Similarly, when an individualfeelsshe's doing more than her fairshare of ateam's work, asking her to consider other people's effortsbefore estimat­ ing her own can help align her perception with reality, restore her commitment, and reducea skewed sense of entitlement.

Taking the lAT is another valuable strategy for collecting data,. We recommend that you and others in your organization use the test to exposeyour own implicit biases. But one word of warning: Because the test isan educational and research too~ not aselection or evaluation tool, itis critical that you consider your results and others' to be private information. Simplyknowing the magnitude and pervasiveness of your own biases can help directyourattention to areas of decision making that are in need of careful examination and reconsideration. For example, a manager whosetesting reveals a bias toward certain groups ought to examine her hiringpractices to see ifshehas indeed been disproportionately favoringthosegroups. But because so many people harbor suchbi­ ases, they can also be generally acknowledged, and that knowledge can be usedas the basis for changing the way decisions aremade. Itis important to guard against usingpervasiveness to justify complacency and inaction: Pervasive­ ness ofbias is not amark ofitsappropriateness any more than poor eyesight isconsidered so ordinary acondition that itdoes not require corrective lenses. Shape your environment. Research shows that implicitattitudes can be shaped by exter­ nal cues in the environment. For example, Curtis Hardin and colleagues at UCLA used the lAT to study whether subjects'implicit racebiaswould be affected ifthe test wasad­ ministered by ablack investigator. One group ofstudents took the test under the guidance of awhite experimenter; another group took the test with ablack experimenter. The mere pres­ ence of ablack experimenter, Hardin found, reduced the level of subjects' implicitanti­ black bias on the lAT. Numerous similar stud­ ies have shown similar effects with other so­ cial groups. What accounts for such shifts?We can speculate that experimenters in class­ rooms are assumed to be competent, in charge, and authoritative. Subjectsguidedby a black experimenter attribute these positive characteristics to that person, and then per­ haps to the group asawhole. Thesefindings suggest that one remedy for implicit biasis to expose oneself to images and social environ­ ments that challenge stereotypes.

We know of a judge whose court islocated in apredominantly African-American neigh­ borhood. Because of the crime and arrestpat­ terns inthe community, most people the judge sentences areblack. Thejudge confronted a paradox. On the one hand, she took a judicial oath to be objective and egalitarian, and in­ deed she consciously believed that her deci­ sions wereunbiased. On the other hand, every day shewas exposed to an environment that reinforced the association between black men and crime. Although sheconsciously rejected HARVARDBUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003 racialstereotypes, shesuspected thatshehar­ bored unconscious prejudicesmerelyfrom working inasegregated world.Immersed in this environment each day, shewondered ifit was possible to give thedefendants afair hear­ ing.

Rather thanallow herenvironment to rein­ force abias, thejudge created analternative environment. Shespent avacation week sit­ tinginafellow judge's courtinaneighbor­ hood where thecriminals beingtriedwere pre­ dominantly white. Case aftercasechallenged the stereotype ofblacks ascriminal andwhites as law abiding andsochallenged anybias against blacksthatshemight haveharbored.

Think about thepossibly biasedassociations your workplace fosters. Is there,perhaps, a "wall of fame" withpictures of high achievers all castfrom thesame mold? Are certain types of managers invariably promoted? Dopeople overuse certainanalogies drawnfrom stere

Broaden yourdecision making. Imagine that youaremaking adecision in a meeting about animportant companypolicy that will benefitsomegroups of employees more than others.Apolicy might, forexample, provide extra vacation timeforallemployees but elim­ inate theflex time that hasallowed manynew parents to balance workwiththeir family re­ sponsibilities. Anotherpolicymightlowerthe mandatory retirementage,eliminating some older workers but creating advancement op- HARVARDBUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003 portunitiesforyounger ones.Nowpretend that, as you make yourdecisions, youdon't know which groupyoubelong to.That is,you don't know whether youaresenior or junior, married or single, gay or straight, aparent or childless, male or female,healthy orun­ healthy. You will eventually findout, but not until after the decision hasbeen made. Inthis hypothetical scenario,whatdecision would you make? Would youbewilling to risk being in the group disadvantaged by yourowndeci­ sion? Howwould yourdecisions differ ifyou could make them wearing variousidentities not yourown?

This thought experiment is aversion of philosopher JohnRawls's concept of the "veil of ignorance," whichposits that onlya person ignorant of hisown identity iscapa­ ble of a truly ethical decision. Few of uscan assume the veil completely, whichispre­ cisely whyhidden biases,evenwhen identi­ fied, aresodifficult to correct. Still,applying the veil of ignorance to your nextimportant managerial decisionmayoffer some insight into how strongly implicitbiasesinfluence you. Just as managers canexpose biasby col­ lecting data before actingonintuition, they can take other preemptive steps.Whatlist of names doyou start withwhen considering whom to send to a training program, recom­ mend foranew assigmnent, or nominate for a fast-track position? Most of uscan quickly and with little concentration come up with such alist. Butkeep inmind that your intu­ ition is prone to implicit prejudice (which will stronglyfavordominant andwell-liked groups), in-group favoritism (whichwill favor people inyour owngroup), overclaim­ ing (which willfavor you),andconflict of in­ terest (which willfavor people whoseinter­ ests affect yourown). Instead of relying on a mental shortlistwhen making personnel de­ cisions, startwithafull list of names of em­ ployees whohave relevant qualifications.

Using abroad list of names hasseveral ad­ vantages. Themost obvious is that talent may surface that might otherwise beover­ looked. Lessobvious but equally important, the very act of considering a counterstere

PAGE 10 trust acomplex presentation to afemale col­ league or to receive apromotion from an African-American boss-can prompt less­ biased and more ethical decision making.

Similarly, consciously considering counterin­ tuitive options in the face of conflicts of in­ terest, or when there's an opportunity to overclaim, canpromote moreobjective and ethical decisions.

TheVigilant Manager Ifyouanswered "true" to thequestion at the start of this article, youfeltwith some confi­ dence that you are an ethical decision maker.

How would youanswer itnow? It'sclear that neither simpleconviction nor sincere inten­ tion isenough to ensure that you arethe ethi­ cal practitioner youimagine yourself to be.

Managers whoaspire to beethical mustchal­ lenge theassumption that they're alwaysun­ biased andaclmowledge that vigilance, evenmore than good intention, isadefining char­ acteristic of an ethical manager. Theymust ac­ tively collect data,shape theirenvironments, and broaden theirdecision making.What's more, an obvious redress isavailable. Manag­ ers should seekevery opportunity to imple­ ment affinnative action policies-not because of pastwrongs done to onegroup or another but because of theeveryday wrongs that we cannow document areinherent in the ordi­ nary, everyday behavior of good,well-inten­ tioned people. Ironically, onlythose whoun­ derstand theirownpotential forunethical behavior canbecome theethical decision makers that they aspire tobe. \) Reprint R0312D; Harvard Business Review OnPoint 5526 To order, seethe next page or call800-988-0886 or 617-783-7500 or go to www.hbr.org HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW· DECEMBER 2003