THE SA CULTURE AND ETHICS Part Five B A

The Salvation Army and its officers, staff and supporters operate in an era of increasing connectivity and intensifying public scrutiny. Integrity built on trust is the lifeblood of our organization and remain unquestionably our single most important asset in ensuring our long-term survival. 

The recent demise of long-respected stalwart financial empires directed by ‘EXPERTS’ demonstrated both the vital importance of trust, and the severe consequences to economic prosperity when it is undermined by the untrustworthy behavior of those very same ‘experts’. "...expertise and trust are not just linked, but indistinguishable. An expert without trust cannot really be an expert."(PWC)

Much has been said and written about the SA ‘experts’ assigned to investigate allegations of collusion and corruption subsequent to Dr. Paul Thistle’s re-assignment to Canada in August 2012. The General, born in and having served in Zim in the 1990’s believed, when still Chief of the Staff, that he’d selected expert and trustworthy persons capable of interpreting the on-the-ground facts in Zimbabwe. And they were on the surface experts due their familiarity with things Zimbabwean, SA operations internationally, the local language, culture, societal and political structures and the regular parrying of recognized western ethics.

An what’s more, having been charged to investigate the SA expansion into countries reflecting a similar culture of corruption, I would have sought persons with similar expertise and trustworthiness to explore Russia, Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova if offered the luxury of such expertise. More about this tomorrow….

We would all, I believe, define an expert as a trustworthy person, one that is recognized by demonstrating that their opinions and findings are worth listening to. On their return from Zimbabwe we listened to the SA’s experts but many found them 'not worth my time', a report sadly lacking credibility by many, those unfamiliar with the cross mix of SA operations. 

The trust we’d granted them quickly dissipated. If we go so far as to say that expertise and trust are indistinguishable, their reported findings, or rather lack of findings, suggest that they were far from expert! We, acknowledged the IHQ team’s expertise, though our first choice would have been an independent investigative team. So where did it all go wrong?

Can an IHQ SA representative in whom we’ve lost trust really be called an expert? Is it the close linkage with trust that reflects a wholly justifiable expectation from us, that an expert should demonstrate why we believe them?

"There are experts and there are experts". If you were looking for a certified auditor to pour over ledgers during the midnight hours protected by security guards you were seeking a very different expert from what IHQ delivered. 


Consider instead the IHQ expert a sage: someone knowledgeable through experience, and who could be relied on to help the SA make a difficult decision, not necessarily by bringing unique knowledge, but by applying expertise for two diametrically opposed purposes. 

Did the IHQ expert use his expertise as a weapon to wipe out debate and argument? 

Should we have expected a different reported outcome than the one published for the general public’s consumption and trust? Ethics research reveals that different people in different contexts and occupations have different motivations, and different perceptions of what ‘doing the right thing’ means. One would have to be naive and out of touch to believe that a native Zim SA officer would share identical values with an officer trained in their homeland of Korea or Sweden. 

An increasingly common term used in ethics studies is ‘DNA profile’ and directs one to the challenge of comparing values held by diverse cultures (Zim general public and SA officers/staff) believing that they can ever be managed through established checks and balances. In 3rd world countries their culture is rarely in tandem with the SA's culture or other international corporations/ organizations.

Should SA experts be dominated in their search by ‘compliance’ expectations dominating the life and businesses on hand in Zim? Or view all that they inspect seeking instead to balance needs by shifting from compliance to culture. Ethical relationship between business and society cannot be governed by regulations alone.

‘Our world is full of situations where we are forced to be flexible.  We constantly change our perspective and understanding on a myriad of issues and practices and beliefs.  If something isn’t working at work, we change it.  If a practice doesn’t work at home, we change it.  As we grow, our tastes change, so we change our diet, we change our environment, we make concessions for our partners/spouses/ family/friends etc etc etc.  Our world is full of constant change.  Even our personalities constantly change. 

Psychology has all but given up the study of personality, realising that there is no stable, unchanging aspect of who we are that moulds us.  The problem is, as humans, we like – and need – something that doesn’t change.  We need stability.  For many of us, that comes in the form of our beliefs.  When we are asked to consider change in our beliefs, then that last bastion of stability, of stable ground, is ripped from under us.  We can’t cope.

As a result, we cling to what we know.  We fight with all our might to hold firm to that stable ground.  But when we are forced to confront it – such as when we or a loved one grapple with it – we realise that what we thought was stable ground is not stable, and never was.  We need to find a new source of stability.  We need to find a new way of incorporating our life experiences with our knowledge.  Sometimes that means discarding some of what we thought we knew and replacing it with something that fits with reality – like when a parent discards what they thought they knew about child rearing and replaces it with something that works in their situation, or when a doctor replaces what they thought they knew about medicine with some new practice that starts to bring about healing.’ (Former officer Graeme Randall, from a FSAOF published article)

END PART A

Sven Ljungholm, Atlanta Airport - Liverpool