A very busy day today, which started when I awoke at 7:45am. Class at 8:30am!! Stand shower dry brush dress shoes keys car drive school tea sit listen, about that fast. It was Ethics Day at Insead, (another) half day to expose the January promotion to ethical situations and make them think a bit about why they act the way they do. The day was run by Professor Henri-Claude de Bettignies, who has been at Insead for many years and also teaches at Stanford. An ebullient Frenchman, he has a great way of drawing opinions out of people and digging into one's rationale for action.
After an initial lecture, we had the chance to attend one of several seminars given by guests whose jobs involved some ethical dimension. I went to the one given by Pieter J.Van Der Zwet , who works at KPMG in their Ethics & Integrity Services division (what a great department name!).
One of the dilemmas presented was the following: you are a passenger in a car, and your boss is driving. While talking with each other, you notice that he is speeding and not paying enough attention to the road. An instant later, you hit a person walking their bicycle across the street. The accident is clearly your fault; you stop and the police soon arrive, along with medical services to take care of the badly-injured bicyclist. The police ask your boss what happened, and he said that the bicyclist appeared out of nowhere, and he didn't see it. The police then ask you what happened. What do you say?
- Say nothing
- Agree with your boss
- Tell everything that happened, that you were speeding and driving recklessly
- Tell about the speeding
Out of the 20 people in the room, nobody chose 1. Only one chose 4, which seems like a morally indefensible position. The vast majority of people chose 3, which, to this writer, may not match empirically observed results. But it was an interesting discussion.
9:42:31 PM 
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