Inside the ‘gray zone’: how to lead when no one is right  

When I was finishing my PhD in 2005, every business school wanted an ethics professor in their ranks. That was hardly surprising. The deep shadow of the accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom still loomed large, and there was a high demand for ethical leadership training. Despite their intellectual and analytical powers, leaders were making unethical decisions while being praised for their performance. Enron executives were cooking the books as Fortune named it America’s most innovative company for six consecutive years.

“I don’t think Enron is that unusual,” Enron’s whistleblower, Sherron Watkins, said in an interview with The Guardian after the scandal broke. “After all, we have a chief executive class that act like dictators of small Latin American countries.”

Fast forward to today, and while many business schools have integrated values of responsible leadership into their programs, demand for ethical training has faded. I have delivered fewer than 10 ethics…