Ethical leadership in action

This article was published in Living Ethics: issue 79 autumn 2010

Denis Moriarty, Managing Director of Our Community, was among the first group of Vincent Fairfax Fellows (VFF) in 1994. Jane Sloane, Executive Director of the International Women’s Development Agency, undertook the VFF in 1998. They met at a VFF annual retreat and their friendship has endured. The Vincent Fairfax Fellowship is the Centre’s ethics in leadership program.

JANE: When I was offered the Fellowship, I’d just left the South Australian Tourism Commission to start my own cultural marketing business, which I called Big World.

An intuitive part of me felt like I really needed the fellowship so it wasn’t just me working in my own space, but I was truly being connected to a wider world. I’d studied at university, but I didn’t really feel like I had an intellectual basis for ethical decision-making.

I have many friends who are very ethical, and I wanted to be challenged on my thinking around ethics with a group, so that they would also be part of my extended circle.

DENIS: I’d just been sacked by Jeff Kennett and his new Liberal Government. I had the role of Commissioner and Deputy-Secretary of the Victorian Tourism Commission and I was perceived as politically-aligned to the former Government. It was the best thing that ever happened because it forced me to reflect on what I was doing with my life.

I’d never thought of ethics or what ethics were. I’d thought of values, but even then it wasn’t in a deep way.

The course changed my life in the sense that I found a far greater circle of like-minded friends and fellow travellers. The program gave us enormous insights into our own selves because we shared a lot that we would never have shared in any other group. I think that that was predominantly through Simon Longstaff and through the training and exposure we had.

LE: Was the Fellowship challenging, confronting?

JANE: The most uncomfortable I felt was when Simon Longstaff immersed our group in a hypothetical for a whole week. We were given different roles and it was horrifying to see the decisions we were making when we were role-playing these characters and how far away it was from what we thought we’d be doing in these circumstances. That was a really important experience. It reminded me of the importance of walking in another’s shoes.

DENIS: I never found it confronting. Different people have spoken about how it changed their life. Some divorced, some separated, some immediately changed jobs. Some went back home and thought, ‘I want to reassess life.’

I really appreciated the concept of the values – understanding values and when things count, how you react and what you do. In many ways, that’s how Our Community started. I came back and thought, “I don’t want to do consulting for the rest of my life. I certainly don’t want to go back into government.” I’d sat on a number of boards and I thought, “Yep, this is what I want to do”.

JANE: I also had a strong sense of wanting to place myself in challenging situations – the Fellowship gave me the confidence to do this. Certainly the Fellowship project that I undertook in Asia on child prostitution and trafficking was just searing in its impact.

And then I had this extraordinary encounter with Nelson Mandela in the lead-up to the Olympics when he said to me, “Jane, the most important work you can do is in relation to community development and conflict resolution.” My grandmother died the same day, fulfilling a dream I’d had.

When such strong messages are given to you, you want your life to count for something. It all convinced me that doing the work that I’m doing now was the direction that I needed to take for myself.

LE: Who were your mentors?

JANE: I had two. Roberta Sykes, the black writer, poet and activist, and Malcolm Fraser as well.

I wanted both the connection with a woman, a black woman, particularly given her engagement in poetry and writing as well as her activism and the fact that she was the first black woman from Australia to go to Harvard Law School. And Malcolm Fraser, because of his increasing focus on humanitarian work, and the impact of that focus.

DENIS: I had John Fairfax, JB Fairfax as my mentor. In many cases we were like chalk and cheese. We’d get together on a monthly basis, and at the end of the day there were enormous commonalities and he was a great mentor. It was not an extended mentorship, but we still see each other.

I turned to him when I felt the VFF program was being compromised by the tendering out. For me it was something that was very close to my heart and I thought, “Future participants won’t get the opportunity I had.”

The Vincent Fairfax Family Foundation had put aside a large amount of money to start this scholarship program and to fund it. Recently, the independent Board that runs the program decided to tender it out.

I thought it was tied centrally to St James Ethics Centre and Simon Longstaff and now that it has gone to Melbourne University Business School it will become – with all due respect – just another university course without any soul. I don’t think it will be a good result for the Fairfax family or for the awardees. The Fellowship program taught me not to shy away from what I believe in, and while many might agree that tendering out is great, I am not backing away from my belief that this was an inappropriate decision. I feel proud I can voice my opinions – that is what the Fairfax experience gave me.

LE: Does an ethical analysis of a situation come more easily, more quickly to you now?

JANE: What comes more quickly are reminders of other situations and how I’ve responded and what I would do differently now.

Being aware of the kinds of questions you ask when faced with an ethical dilemma is a really important ability to have, and that’s part of what the program has given me. It’s encouraged me to live more on the edge in terms of advocating for an equitable and just world, especially for women.

It’s very easy to be cast as an ethical person, because you are doing good humanitarian work, and you are also a Fellow of an ethics program, and in many ways that places even greater responsibility on you as an individual to really live up to those expectations.

DENIS: I don’t put too much emphasis on ethical challenges. There are questions every day in your life about what you do and the decisions you make, and for me, the ethics program was a profound, profound experience.

The course reinforced the views and values I had before. Not that I was a highly ethical person before, but I think my behaviour was reasonable and I think it reinforced my upbringing, some of the lessons I’d learned in government and some of the things I’d experienced in life.

I was quite determined.I hated injustice and the course taught me to actually speak out. Not on every occasion. But each time I spoke out I was a little bit more courageous for the next time. It’s infectious.

LE: What are the pros and cons of behaving ethically?

JANE: In terms of the cons, it comes back to that sense of responsibility, having to be more careful in terms of what you do and how. Sometimes it can be very lonely, when people are privately encouraging you to take a particular path because they also agree it’s the right thing to do, and yet when you’ve made that decision public, you’re the one in the spotlight having to face the music and you are essentially alone at that moment.

DENIS: I think that’s the wonderful part and the sad part. The wonderful part is that you do that and you often find people you don’t expect to join you joining you. And then others you would have expected to speak out don’t speak out.

It can have financial consequences. As an organisation we choose not to work with some companies and some community groups. That has a financial consequence, definitely.

JANE: Some situations are very challenging. Sometimes you need to make a decision to step away from an organisation even though it’s doing good humanitarian work if the way it’s being done doesn’t accord with your ethical standards.

DENIS: The upside of behaving ethically is that it’s just more comfortable. You can come to work or you can go home a little bit less stressed. I think it does bring stress if you do things that you don’t think you should do.

JANE: You sleep well at night, and also you do then become a mentor for others, especially younger people. There’s that sense of a continuum in terms of sharing your skills and knowledge and learning with a new generation.