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Realigning the Army’s Ethical Compass

Colonel Michael B. Siegl, U.S. Army

There is concern across the Army of an ethical crisis among 

its leaders. A renewed emphasis on a discussion of the meaning 

of the Army profession and ethics has cascaded across the 

institution. We hope the Army Ethic may help guide individuals’

characters and decision making.1 The Army’s goal is to build 

character and the discipline to enable individuals to make the 

right ethical choices.3 Current efforts are designed with the

assumption that ethical decisions are consciously made. 

Unfortunately, they do not take into account fully the 

underlying psychological tendencies that drive unethical 

behavior or situations that lead “good” people to make unethical 

decisions.4 We must come to a more complete understanding of why 

leaders may make corrupt, discriminatory, or unethical 

decisions. 

“...[We] can be blind to the obvious, and we are also blind to our 

blindness.”5

Research in socio-psychological studies show there are 

limits to the cognitive abilities of individuals in decision 

making and in determining their choices.6 We often lack all the 

information and time to properly frame the issue and develop the 

full range of options and consequences; this leads to choosing 
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solutions that are just good enough or that “satisfice.”7 

Exacerbating this is the brain’s use of heuristics to simplify 

decision making--under certain conditions those heuristics are 

not appropriate and cause faulty judgment or biases.8 A few 

tendencies are highlighted to emphasize the importance of 

understanding our cognitive biases.9 

Every day, we make decisions that are influenced subtly. 

When we read the plastic cards in our hotel rooms that previous 

occupants had reused their towels, the percentage of us reusing 

our towels increase by 26%.10 This is the principle that drives 

us to behavior that is similar to others, especially if they are 

like us.11 Managing this principle can help in the development 

of ethical behavior. 

How problems are framed affects our decisions. Nobel 

Laureate Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky showed that most of us 

tend to be risk adverse when presented with negatively framed 

problems and risk seeking with positively framed problems.12 

They presented respondents with a case in which a disease is 

projected to kill 600 people.13 They offered two choices: 

Program A [200 people survive (72% selected)]; Program B [onethird chance 600 people survive and a two-third chance no one 

survives (28%)]. However, when the choices were framed 

differently, a different situation arose: Program C [400 people 

die (22%)]; Program D [one-third chance no one dies and two-
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third chance 600 people die (78%)]. The outcomes of programs A 

(72%) and C (22%) are the same while the outcomes of programs B 

(28%) and D (78%) are the same. The framing of issues is 

critical to how we choose alternatives in addressing problems.

If we are not checking for ethical violations, we may not 

see it. This is true especially if behavior is incrementally 

leading toward the “slippery slope” of unethical behavior.14 We 

are more likely to accept others’ unethical behavior if it 

occurs gradually over time rather than in a singularly apparent 

event or choice.15 This slippery slope is exacerbated by a 

tendency to commit to a previous decision. We focus on 

information that confirms our beliefs for a previous decision 

and commit to a decision because we want to show consistency 

with what we have already decided, even if it may be wrong.16

The bias of overconfidence can be the “mother of all 

biases.”17 It leads to “...the tendency to be too sure our 

judgments and decisions are accurate, uninterested in testing 

our assumptions, and dismissive of evidence suggesting we might 

be wrong...[and] to believe we have more control than we actually 

do.”18 Other negative biases become greatly enhanced. Some 

researchers see ethical failures by leaders as being a “byproduct of success.”19 Context and situations affect ethical 

behavior. Overconfidence convinces us that we can be objective 

and immune to influences brought on by success. Evidence is to 
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the contrary.20 Incentives and self-serving perspectives can 

twist the objectivity we believe we hold. 

Finally, the fact is we are all capable, in certain 

circumstances, of making unethical decisions.21 The Milgram and 

Stanford Prison experiments are cases that showed situations can 

lead “good” people to do unethical acts even when they were 

against doing such acts.22 Even a single negative word 

description against another individual influences how we 

perceive that individual and affect our decisions and behavior 

toward that individual, often times unconsciously.23 

Unethical decisions are not simply conscious choices. 

Setting the Azimuth: Developing an Ethics Strategy

Generally, people attribute ethical failures solely to an 

individual’s volition. This leader is motivated by greed, a 

sense of entitlement of being in a position of authority or 

power, and a belief of exemption from rules and regulations.24 

This incomplete understanding has led to a call for an Army 

Ethic, more ethical training, and a greater “sensitizing” to 

ethical issues. Yet, evidence is inconclusive on whether 

studying about ethics and ethics programs increase ethical 

behavior.25 Unfortunately, many ethics programs only address 

symptoms or portions of the issue leading to mixed results. 

The development of an Army ethics strategy must be done in 

a holistic manner. It requires a valid “program theory” 
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determined by appropriate experts. This necessitates 

identifying, analyzing, and linking the needed inputs to the 

outputs of the strategy resulting in its outcome, ethical 

behavior. Frequently, we have a bias that assumes our choices 

and the consequences of those choices are related even when 

further study may show they are not.26

Often, we make correct predictions despite incorrect 

assumptions or beliefs of how people behave or the way the world 

works.27 However, in strategies with layers of complexity, wrong 

notions of cause and effect will undermine the strategy. 

Furthermore, because we place an inordinate amount of importance 

on individuals’ personality traits, we frequently miss the 

importance of situations and context in affecting behavior.28 

Setting the Waypoints: The Components of the Strategy

The ethics strategy should educate leaders to better 

understand how decisions are made. It should create mechanisms 

within the Army’s institutional structures that provide the 

right incentives to positive ethical decision making. The 

strategy should also facilitate developing a culture that 

promotes such behavior. An unbalanced focus on any one area 

likely will create an ineffective effort in creating the right 

behaviors. 
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 The Army should incorporate the study of judgment in decision 

making into the institutional education curriculum. 

 Education should focus on critical thinking, heuristics, and 

the biases that drive decisions. This provides an 

understanding of how the brain functions and the cognitive 

biases that may impede ethical decision making. 

o Showing how framing an issue, perceiving an ethical issue 

in different ways, or using certain words leads to 

different decisions with differences in consequences can 

be illuminating. 

o Providing prescriptive decision making steps will be 

effective when leaders understand how judgment works and 

the underlying biases that may limit the use of such 

steps. 

 Development of the knowledge of ethics. 

o Like the use of formulae in mathematics, having a 

contextual understanding of when, how, and why to use the 

ethical frameworks is effective. This is true especially 

in realistic scenario driven training. 

o A significant portion of the training should include 

examples of how ethical lapses occurred and how to avoid 

them rather than just focus on how to make good ethical 

decisions.30 
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The second area is in creating mechanisms that provide 

positive incentives for ethical behavior. One area is with the 

leaders’ evaluation system. Currently, the evaluation system is 

weighted heavily on performance and results. While the goal is 

for senior raters to evaluate potential, the propensity for 

leaders to evaluate based on results is undeniable.31 Shifting 

the weight to evaluating leaders on the process and logic of 

their decisions, as well as results, may provide a more 

conducive environment that alleviates the pressures for 

unethical decision making. 

The incentive would be for leaders to be systematic in 

their decision making versus being compulsive or subjective. 

There would be incentive for leaders to reflect and think about 

the consequences of their decisions. Creating the right 

incentives is important in developing leaders with appropriate 

behaviors and reducing risk aversion.

The third area is in creating a culture of ethical 

behavior. Over time, the Army Ethic will help in solidifying 

the identification of the individual to what it is to be an Army 

professional. However, the level of identification to the Army 

Ethic will be only as strong as how Soldiers perceive leaders to 

be adhering to the Ethic and vice versa. What others think and 

do have an influence on our thoughts and behaviors. Ethical 
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behavior is likely to breed ethical behavior in others. We must 

be wary of attitudes and behavior that exhibit group think and 

therefore, incentives for individual thought should be 

encouraged. 

Framing the issue of ethical lapses as behavior resulting 

from choosing to do wrong versus right does not adequately and 

clearly define the nature of the problem. Ethical behavior and 

decision making are complex and dynamic. There is a flawed 

assumption that making ethical decisions is simply a matter of 

an individual making the “right” choice. Developing an effective 

ethics strategy requires an insight into the cognitive limits to 

decision making, complexities of human nature, and the context 

within which leaders make decisions. 

Notes

1. Center for the Army Profession and Ethic, Mission Command Center 

of Excellence, The Army Ethic, white paper (Washington D.C.: 

Government Printing Office [GPO], 2014), 11.

2. The Hippocratic Oath within the medical community is one example 

of a code of ethics. It is important to note that codes of conduct 

and ethic within the US military, other militaries, and professions 

have not prevented ethical lapses within those institutions and 

professions. Understanding why ethical codes of conduct and ethics 

programs requires understanding why unethical behavior occurs: 
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competing forces of the way an individual’s brain functions, 

perception to the individual’s situation and surroundings, and others’ 

behaviors all play a role.

3. Raymond T. Odierno, “The U.S. Army: Trusted Professionals for the 

Nation,” Army Magazine 64(10) (2014), 28. See the CSA’s quote from 

that page: “At the heart of every soldier must be unwavering 

character. Character is what defines us. Character is about 

understanding the moral and ethical values that we represent as well 

as being able to navigate the ethical dilemmas that we face during our 

careers.”

4. Max H. Bazerman and Mahzarin R. Banaji, “The Social Psychology of 

Ordinary Ethical Failures,” Social Justice Research 17(2) (June 2004), 

112. Additional studies on the role of situations and context that 

drive good people to behave unethically: Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer 

Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (New York: Random 

House, 2007), 197. Furthermore, in this paper, I am not considering 

the ethical considerations of the “right versus right” choices. The 

focus of the paper is on ethical decisions that may lead to what the 

public generally sees as being corrupt or discriminatory.

5. Quote from Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow 

(New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011), 23 (Kindle edition).

6. See Irving L. Janis and Leon Mann, Decision Making: A 

Psychological Analysis of Conflict, Choice and Commitment (New York: 

The Free Press, 1977), 15; and Max H. Bazerman and Don A. Moore, 

Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 8th ed. (United States: John 

Wiley & Sons, 2013), 3.
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7. Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 5.

8. In their seminal work, Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and 

Biases, Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman showed there were three 

heuristics that underlie intuitive decision making: representative, 

availability, and adjustment and anchoring. Subsequent research has 

shown additional heuristics and biases that can cause faulty decision 

making. Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases can be found 

as Appendix A in Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: 

Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2011) starting on page 419 (Kindle edition). 

The article was originally published in Science, Volume 185, 1974. 

Additionally, Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision 

Making, capture many of the current thoughts on heuristics and biases.

9. More examples of biases and how they can affect our decisions are 

listed in Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 

7-10. Heuristics allow decision makers short cuts to deal with the 

complexities they face. While heuristics work favorably in many 

situations, the short cuts and biases can also negatively affect 

decisions. This is what leaders need to be educated on to ensure 

awareness of such situations. The important point is that the 

heuristics and biases can impede good decision making and can affect 

our ethical behavior.

10. Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini, Yes!: 

50 Scientifically Proven Ways to be Persuasive (New York, Free Press, 

2008), 11 (Kindle Edition).

11. Robert B. Cialdini, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, (New 

York: HarperCollins e-books, 2009), location 1926 (Kindle edition). 
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Some psychologists have noted that the principle of social proof is a 

psychological phenomenon that drives people to follow others’ 

behavior. This is especially true in situations where a person is 

uncertain what to do (and therefore, looks to see what others are 

doing) and even more likely in situations where the person sees the 

others as similar to him.

12. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, 436 (Kindle edition).

13. The description of the decision making case of the Asian disease 

and the details of that experiment are detailed in Daniel Kahneman, 

Thinking, Fast and Slow, 435-436 (Kindle edition).

14. Ann E. Tenbrunsel and David M. Messick, “Ethical Fading: The Role 

of Self-Deception in Unethical Behavior,” Social Justice Research

17(2) (June 2004), 228. 

15. Francesca Gino and Max H. Bazerman, “When misconduct goes 

unnoticed: The acceptability of gradual erosion in others’ unethical 

behavior,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 45 (2009), 717.

16. Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 127-

130.

17. Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 14.

18. Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 15. 

19. Dean C. Ludwig and Clinton O. Longenecker, “The Bathsheba 

Syndrome: The Ethical Failures of Successful Leaders,” Journal of 

Business Ethics 12 (1993), 265, accessed 1 November 2014, 

http://ksuweb.kennesaw.edu/~uzimmerm/Notes/Ludwig+Longenecker,%20The%2

0Bathsheba%20Syndrome.pdf.
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20. Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 144 

and 154.

21. Gino and Bazerman, “When misconduct goes unnoticed: The 

acceptability of gradual erosion in others’ unethical behavior,” 717.

22. In their books: Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An 

Experimental View, 1st ed. (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1974) 

and Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People 

Turn Evil (New York: Random House, 2007), both Milgram and Zimbardo 

discuss the results of their experiments that played a tremendous role 

in increasing awareness of the importance of context and situation in 

determining one’s behavior.

23. Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn 

Evil, 19.

24. See opinions such as Paul Grossgold and Ritch Eich, “It's Time To 

Put A Stop To Ethical Lapses In The Military,” Forbes, May 5, 2014,

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2014/05/25/our-armed-forcesdeserve-better-than-scandals/.

25. Max H. Bazerman and Francesca Gino. "Behavioral Ethics: Toward a 

Deeper Understanding of Moral Judgment and Dishonesty." Annual Review 

of Law and Social Science 8 (2012), 89 and Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr. 

and Allen P. Webb, “Business Ethics: A View from the Trenches,” 

California Management Review 37(2) (Winter 1995), 24.

26. Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 39.

27. Lee Ross and Richard E. Nisbett, The Person and the Situation: 

Perspectives of Social Psychology, 2nd ed. (Great Britain: Pinter and 

Martin Ltd, 2011), 7. An example of the successful predictions based 
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on incorrect beliefs is that of a ball rolling to a stop. Ross and 

Nisbett discuss the “intuitive notion of momentum” where the mistaken 

belief is that “...a force applied to an object gives it a store of 

energy that gradually dissipates. The correct notion (that of inertia) 

requires that objects at rest remain at rest and that objects in 

motion remain in motion, unless some other force is applied.”

28. Tenbrunsel and Messick, “Ethical Fading: The Role of SelfDeception in Unethical Behavior,” 229 and Ross and Nisbett, The Person 

and the Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology, 4. Ross and 

Nisbett term placing too much cause to a person’s disposition or 

personality as the “fundamental attribution error.”

29. U.S. Department of the Army, The U.S. Army Operating Concept: Win 

in a Complex World, TRADOC Pamphlet 525-3-1 (Washington, DC: GPO, 7 

October 2014), 18.

30. Wendy Joung, Beryl Hesketh, and Andrew Neal, “Using “War Stories” 

to Train for Adaptive Performance: Is it Better to Learn from Error or 

Success?, Applied Psychology: An International Review 55 (2006), 296.

31. Bazerman and Moore, Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, 8. 

In this section, Bazerman and Moore highlight the fact that because of 

the availability heuristic, managers tend to rate those in close 

proximity to them and their recent results more critically because 

they are more vivid in their memory. As they state, “These irrelevant 

factors (such as vividness) can inappropriately influence an event’s 

immediate perceptual salience...” Therefore, a leader may base the 

rating predominately on a current result (both positive and negative) 
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while disregarding the vast amounts of previous results from the 

previous year of ratings.