Communication Ethics: a researcher’s view
by Nick Winkfield, Managing Partner, Stakeholder Studies Ltd

The market research industry has long understood the importance to its survival of ethical behaviour. We rely on the trust of the public, because if they do not trust us they will not participate in our surveys and focus groups. We need them to know that we will respect their anonymity; that we and our clients will make responsible use of their information, and only for the purposes that we have explained to them; and that we will not abuse our knowledge of them, for example by passing on their names to others. Our codes of conduct, and in Europe our laws, provide a solid framework for our professional behaviour, and would probably reassure any who might read them.

And yet I do not feel entirely comfortable when the ethical judgement of individual researchers is supplanted by rule-books. The codes are excellent in that they set out the ethical principles as well as the rules. But once rules exist, it is often easier for practitioners to consult the rules than to apply the principles, and to leave consideration of the ethics involved to the legislators and regulators. It is then a short step, in our professional world as indeed in society, to the point where legislators and regulators are carrying an impossible burden, and the rest of us are discouraged (in spite of protestations from on high) from participating in the debate at all.

Both as a researcher and as a citizen, I prefer not to delegate my responsibility in this way. First, the rate of change in business practices, as in many aspects of everyday life, is such that our ‘guardians’ simply cannot keep pace. Second, I would feel personally and professionally diminished by it. Third, the increasing distance between ‘them’ and ‘us’ has already contributed to a loss of trust in our political leaders, and hence of civic engagement, enough possibly to threaten democracy itself; and to serious abuses in the business world.

This increasing distance is real, and probably due in large part to the concentration of powers at the remote centres of increasingly large and complex organisations - both in business and politics. It can only be bridged by effective, credible communications, through trusted channels from a trusted source.

Communication ethics are essential to building trust, and hence to all our relationships. To be ‘trusted’ by our survey informants or business partners to obey the rules is to be trusted in a small way. It is unlikely in itself to make them want to do business with us. For that, they expect us to demonstrate, in our communication with them and in all our other behaviours that may affect them, that we are ‘of good character’: having some ethos to support the logos and pathos of our rhetoric.

In our rôles as researchers, organisational communicators and citizens, the same principle applies: ethical communication leads to trust, which in turn supports our relationships. The present tendency to substitute rule-books for values, which is perhaps the soft option in a multi-cultural environment, is putting at risk the integrity of relationships in organisations and society.

The clear understanding and everyday application of communication ethics is the fundamental safeguard of integrity.

Extract from a paper for the Institute of Communication Ethics

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