Federal Ethics Laws: Is this an oxymoron!

 I read recently an article titled: With so many Ethics laws, Why so many ethical flaws? I was stunned by what was revealed. Here’s why.

There is a document called the Compilation of Federal Ethics Laws that has 109 pages!! Federal civil servants have mandated yearly ethics training. Training on what, compliance? ethics? Or ethics laws?

 There can be no such thing as an ethics law because you can’t legislate ethics. Ethics is unenforceable. Compliance is enforceable. Ethics cannot be a law. This is an oxymoron and tends to confuse people, especially our civil servants.

Compliance is a letter of the law and ethics is the spirit of the law. There needs to be a distinct difference in the training.

“Federal Ethics Laws” totally confuses people into thinking the compliance = ethics and that compliance training should take care of everything, including ethics. Where does this come from?

All civil servants take in Oath of Office. Maybe the “powers that be” ought to focus on training these people in the process of thinking ethically to help them with their everyday decision making. This training should be in addition to and separate from compliance training. Let’s not throw them in together and have unrealistic expectations of our civil servants, like the article so clearly points out.

Sometimes I wonder how things like this get started and evolve into something so ineffective and confusing. I also wonder who pays for all these “ethical flaws”?