CCAL hosts Dr. Mary Gentile, an expert in Business Ethics Education

On January 23, Dr. Mary Gentile from the Darden School of Business visited CCAL. She met with executives from Calgary’s business community and provided an overview of her business ethics program “Giving Voice to Values”. Participants from different industries had a chance to ask their questions to Dr. Gentile.

“Giving Voice to Values” is a business ethics program that is built on the assumption that individuals hold ethical values and they would like to act on them. The unique feature of the program is that it is challenging the traditional cognitive approach in ethics training and encouraging participants to focus on the behavioural aspects of it. In other words, it is aiming to fill the gap between knowing what is right and exhibiting the right action. Dr. Gentile argues that individuals usually know the right course of action but feel that acting on it is not a choice. “All leaders have different levels of freedom, and authority as well as different personalities and styles, but they all have many choices.”, she says. She also recommends answering these four questions to everyone who holds a value they would like to honour.

• What is the risk for all the affected parties if I act on my value?
• What are the leverage points?
• What pushbacks can I get?
• How can I reframe this challenge?

Mary Gentile is the director of the “Giving Voice to Values” initiative and a faculty member and educational consultant at Darden School of Business. She previously worked at Harvard Business School. Dr. Gentile holds a B.A. from the College of William and Mary and a Ph.D. from the State University of New-York, Buffalo. She was named as a “Top Mind 2017” by Compliance Weekly and her work has been featured by prestigious media outlets such as Financial Times and Harvard Business Review.