Or should we solve this problem by establishing an “ethics office” at every bank, as is sometimes suggested? Of course, the attention we see these days for ethical dilemmas is laudable. But the risk of having a dedicated ethics office is that the rest of the organization may come to think that they no longer need to worry their heads over ethics.
If this should be the effect, an ethics office would even be counterproductive. For instead of making the organization as a whole more ethical, it would prompt a “box-ticking” attitude. Therefore, rather than focusing on establishing ethics offices as a “second line of defense”, we should focus on the ethics of the “first line of defense”: the bankers themselves.