10 steps to integrity.

• Author: Holtzman, Henry
• Position: Book Review

"The Integrity Advantage" by Adrian Gostik and Dana Telford Gibbs Smith Publisher Layton, Utah 2003, 107 pages, $18.95.

Authors Adrian Gostik and Dana Telford believe that unintended consequences are the slippery slope to illegal actions in business. For example, the auditors at Arthur Andersen were seeking ways to better serve their Enron client. The unintended consequence of this otherwise laudable business goal was the demise of both companies.

Apparently no one at the working level at either company bothered to ask whether their activities were unethical, let alone illegal. At the supervisory level there was no need to question whether the actions taken were unethical. The key players knew what they were doing was immoral, illegal and possibly even fattening.

That's why there's a strange unintended consequence to the book itself. The authors should have foreseen a book about business ethics that's only 107 pages long, set in 12-point type on a small-format page is by definition pretty funny. In fact it's vaguely reminiscent of a notorious work published during the late 1970s titled, "The Ethics Of Wall Street," a book bound with an imposing hard cover that consisted of a title page followed by 160 blank pages.

Although Gostik's and Telford's book's appearance may be strange, its content is straightforward, serious and concise. The premise is that integrity is an advantage to smart businesses and not a drag on revenues or profits. The authors believe that it is essential for businesses to draw a line in the sand and let their clients know they will never jeopardize their integrity by crossing it. This results in the integrity advantage, cited by the authors as the reason why some companies do business with suppliers for extended periods of time.

At the heart of the integrity advantage are 10 integrity characteristics that individuals should and businesses must possess if they are to thrive and grow. The authors explain it this way:

"Based on our time observing and interviewing influential CEOs, leaders and top executives around the world, we have identified 10 characteristics that are consistently displayed by people with a high degree of integrity. Keep in mind that this model represents a sliding...