“Can you teach people to be ethical?” 

I actually say, “Absolutely, not.” What I can do is encourage people to think about the decisions they are about to make or the situations that they’re in, so hopefully by thinking about these things, that will lead them not to make the wrong decision.

— Michael McMillan
Ph.D., CPA, CFA, CCEP
Director of ethics education at CFA Institute

Life is filled with situations that cannot easily be categorized as either entirely right or entirely wrong. As professionals who care about upholding ethical standards, and are required to according to the CFA Code of Ethics and Standards of Professional Conduct, being able to navigate within these non-binary situations is critical to maintaining ethical integrity—and, by extension, the integrity of financial markets.

CFA Institute recently launched the Ethics Learning Lab as an interactive and fun way to put ethics into practice with structured programs along with resources you can peruse at your leisure. And yes—I do mean a fun way to learn about ethics.

After creating an account, you can register for two programs: Ethical Decision-Making, and GVV for Investment Professionals (GVV stands for Giving Voices to Values). I registered for the next available Ethical Decision-Making program, and was placed in a cohort with others taking the course. Now, if you’re competitive, this next part might appeal to you: throughout the program, everyone competes against each other to get to the top of the leaderboard, gaining points for correctly answering quiz questions, commenting on discussion topics and liking comments. To be honest, I never knew how badly I wanted to win at ethics!

The program is split into seven sections, called field manuals, each outlining a common problem that investment professionals may encounter in their daily lives. 

The first section dives into the most important concept in the program: the Ethical Decision-Making Framework. 

This framework, which is defined by the Identify-Consider-Act-Reflect steps, was created to help analyze, evaluate, and think of the right questions to ask when presented with an ethically grey situation, in order to reach ethical choices. This framework is not only applicable to finance professionals or CFA charterholders, but to all professions—and even to many aspects of our daily lives. 

The rest of the program requires application of the Ethical Decision-Making Framework against the various ethical dilemmas presented, which I am sure might be familiar to some of you. These include: 

• being an analyst who must decide how to proceed after being provided selectively disclosed, material, non-public information that confirms the analyst’s decision for a trade they were going to make prior to receiving this information; 
• dealing with a manager that doesn’t seem to understand the importance of these ethical dilemmas; 
• building and maintaining relationships with company management while balancing which benefits might potentially cloud an analyst’s independence and objectivity, even when other analysts may be accepting these same perks; 
• interacting with large clients who believe they deserve, and expect, advanced notice on investment recommendations; and
• disclosing methodological errors that may cause reputational issues.

The situations presented in the Ethics Learning Lab are realistic, and recognize that we live in a real world where we must deal with conflicts of interests and ethical grey areas. Useful suggestions are presented for companies looking to minimize the occurrence of these situations and provide concrete guidance employees can use to deal with them in the case they cannot be avoided. Strict and robust company gifting policies, for example, provide a way for analysts to respectfully refuse lavish gifts or other benefits that might represent conflicts of interest. It’s not personal; it’s company policy. 

My one complaint with the program—and mind you, it is minor—is that in order to complete the course, and get the associated certificate and CE credits, everyone must like three comments made by their fellow cohort in every module. I assume the logic is that the requirement will force you to read through the other comments and see new perspectives. 

Looks like a new GVV for Investment Professionals course has just opened, with a new cohort—wish me luck as I try to reach the top of the leaderboard! Happy learning.

LINKS

CFA Institute Ethics Learning Lab
https://cfainstitute.nomadic.fm/signin

Ethical Decision-Making Program
PL credit:1.5 (SER credit:1.5); approximately 1.5 hours to complete
https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/ethics-standards/ethics/ethical-decision-making

GVV for Investment Professionals
PL credit:1.5 (SER credit:1.5); approximately 1.5 hours to complete
https://www.cfainstitute.org/en/ethics-standards/ethics/giving-voice-to-values

Ethical Decision Framework
https://www.cfainstitute.org/-/media/documents/support/ethics/ethical-framework-guide.ashx