It is no small undertaking to be an ethical leader.
Ethical leadership is a personal commitment to navigating yourself and others through social contracts and norms, decisions and judgments, trusted relationships and self-interest, duties, responsibilities and accountabilities.
Ethical leadership is always personal. And, if we subscribe to the idea that leaders are at all levels, it is not exclusively a characteristic of the most senior leaders.
In the wake of high-profile integrity failures in the business and government, the APS has committed to building a pro-integrity culture grounded on culture, systems and accountability. A pro-integrity culture assumes ethical leaders.
Where’s the integrity problem?
In the most recent State of the Service report, 92% of respondents understood how their role contributes to achieving outcomes for the Australian public, and 84% believe strongly in the purpose and objectives of the APS.
Most also agreed their immediate manager is open and honest (82%), accountable (81%) and takes responsibility (79%). These compelling results suggest that the APS already has a strong pro-integrity culture.
The simplest problem with measuring integrity in this way is definition. Integrity is a characteristic that is sought-after and admired in aspiring leaders, but its presence or absence is observed in moments.
Integrity is a distinctive characteristic that is part of the psychological make-up of a leader, but it has also been refined and developed over time through exposure and experience. The characteristic of integrity is observed as behaviour, but the behaviour is judged in context.
We know integrity when we see it. Its presence can be inspirational and affirming, and its absence, as we have seen in repeated business and government failures, can be costly.
Surveys and questionnaires, such as the APS employee census, are valuable and useful tools, but they are not, and cannot be, designed to capture the nuance and immediacy of integrity.
There is a need to approach the issue differently, starting with the idea that integrity is not a problem to be fixed but rather a capacity and capability that is developed and matured over time.
A different approach might put the leader, rather than the culture or system, at the centre. The objective would be to work out from where integrity is simultaneously the institution’s greatest strength and weakness.
Mostly, there is a need to start with a more searching understanding of integrity in the APS.
The public service ideal
There is an ideal of public service bound by the understanding that public servants learn their craft over time.
Public service careers have more in common with a vocation than a profession or trade. The lines between the three are easily blurred, but with a vocation, there is often a central ideal. There is a relentless obsession with understanding and reaffirming the ideal. For this reason, integrity failures hit harder in the APS because they directly harm the public service ideal.
Through the government, public servants hold publicly sanctioned power and represent the values of public service to the community through decisions and actions. The APS has an institutional identity that carries the public service ideal. Consequently, the community holds public servants to a higher moral standard, personally and professionally, in achieving government outcomes. The failure of an individual is quickly reflected as a failure of the institution.
The challenge for public servants is to consistently demonstrate high ethical standards in an environment that can test personal ethics, lead to decisions between competing goods (or, occasionally, competing bads), and put personal careers and ambitions at risk. ‘Speaking truth to power’ or being ‘frank and fearless’ is not as simple or clear-cut as these unassuming and often repeated phrases imply.
To act with integrity, public servants must have deep knowledge of the context of government. The depth of this knowledge is the foundation for leading ethically and acting with integrity. Consequently, understanding and learning from history is critical. Robodebt will be an integrity touchstone in the APS for many years.
To learn the craft, APS leaders must be grounded in the institution’s history — its institutional successes and failures as well as the character of its exemplary leaders that best represent the public service ideal.
The health and resilience of the public service ideal are intimately entwined with the quality and expertise of APS leaders. When leaders fail to meet the standard, personally or professionally, the institution’s culture, systems and accountability look fragile.
The unit of measure for institutional integrity is not the culture or the system but rather a person, in a moment, working through contradictions and paradoxes while under time pressure to decide and act. Sustaining the public service ideal always starts with the quality and experience of a public servant.
Where to focus investment?
The APS is constantly under external pressure to be more efficient and do more with less. Maintaining the ideal of public service in this environment leads to compromise and contradiction.
But the more significant threat to the public service ideal, and thereby ethical leadership and integrity, is the decay of APS knowledge, skills, expertise and experience. Uplifting APS capability is more than improving digital literacy and project management.
Learning to navigate environments where power, interests and ambition can challenge the ideals of public service is essential. They are skills needed in some measure at all levels but are acute for the SES.
Public service integrity is nourished by a continuous investment in APS workforce capability. Even when the scaffolding of institutional culture, systems and accountability are well constructed, it is important that material from which it is made does not decay.
The APS Taskforce report, Louder than Words, weaves integrity training through the recommended actions the APS should implement to build a pro-integrity culture. It is also likely the departments and agencies are also implementing complementary training.
But will more of the same type of training contribute to preventing future failure?
Integrity is tested in a moment. At that moment, a person, a leader, makes a choice and exercises judgment. When the moment passes, the course is set, and we are all either on the right or wrong side of ethics.
Education and training inform the decision but the ability of a person to apply that knowledge, to understand how to adapt the knowledge to suit the circumstances, and to have the self-confidence to take actions consistent with the public service ideal in conditions of risk and ambiguity will be the crucial difference in that important moment.
In implementing the actions of the taskforce report, there is an opportunity for the APS to be bold and imaginative in its approach to building a pro-integrity culture. And, it should seize this opportunity.
For the APS, integrity is the heartland issue.
Ethical leadership will be a major discussion point at The Mandarin’s first big live event for 2024 – Trust and Integrity in the Australian Public Service. The all-day conference is in Canberra on February 22. See here for details.
