The exercise of prudential judgment.

• Position: DIRECTOR MEMOIR

Rev. Theodore Hesburgh: When confronted with a moral problem, David Rockefeller would say to the board, 'Let's see what Father Ted has to say about it.'

Ed. Note: Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, a legendary past president of the University of Notre Dame and considered "the most influential priest in America," as the New York Times characterized him, died on Feb. 26, 2015, at the age of 97. A little known fact about Rev. Hesburgh (not even noted in his lengthy Times obituary or on his Wikipedia page) is that he served as a board member of Chase Manhattan Corp. He reflected on this experience for the 1986 book, What Works for Me: 16 CEOs Talk About Their Careers and Commitments (Random House). The author of the book was Thomas R. Horton, who at the time was CEO of the American Management Association (and later to become a columnist for Directors & Boards as well as chairman of the National Association of Corporate Directors). Directors & Boards published in its Spring 1987 edition the following passage on Hesburgh's involvement as a Chase board member.

It was very funny how I got on that board, because I had taken as a rule of thumb that I would not go on any commercial board. Years ago I turned down several such invitations. Then one day David Rockefeller asked me to join the Chase board, and I laughed.

He said, "What's so funny?" I said, "Well, I think it's funny. The Chase Manhattan Bank, the No. 3 bank in the country and one of the very top in the world, wants me on its board, and I have never even had a bank account, much less a course in economics or money or banking."

He said, "We don't want you on the board to teach us about banking--we know about that--but we have a lot of moral, ethical problems in banking today, and to put it bluntly, I would like you to represent the conscience of the board. We have some very tough moral problems to face, so maybe there's some good to be done in that, as well as some evil to be avoided." I said I'd try it for a year, and if at the end of the year I was just a drag on the board, I'd get off.

The directors of the Chase board were heads of the big corporations, all splendid people, some of whom I had known before. Most business people think educators are dreamers, and most educators think that heads of industry are swashbuckling, unethical entrepreneurs. We found out quickly that both of those were myths.

The second thing I found was that David was entirely serious about what he had said. When we...