The last line of the Toastmasters Promise is “To maintain honest and highly ethical standards during the conduct of all Toastmasters activities“.  However, for some, ethics may not always be a sharp black-and-white line.

For example, hopefully no one would forge a VP-Education signature on a project completion page for something that was never done.  But what about holding an education award past June 30 “because it won’t help my club’s DCP score”?  Or what about claiming credit for club officer training, when you went to training but arrived when it was nearly over?  What about being a judge in a speech contest where your spouse is competing?

We know that in the past, at least one district created “paper clubs” in order to meet their goals and be distinguished (they were disqualified).  As the distinguished recognition programs have evolved, we’ve moved towards using easily-verified criteria that are harder to fake, and are less subjective.

Ethics may not always seem to be black and white, nor does everyone give the same answer to a given situation.  The surrounding context is often important as well, and the motivation for the action.  There are entire college curricula devoted to ethics, and degrees granted in various specialties, like healthcare ethics and business ethics.

One method I like to use is “How would you feel if your actions were on the front page of the newspaper?”  Would you feel a need to explain them?  Would you be ashamed?  If so, then you should reconsider.

There’s also merely the appearance of unethical behavior — appearances can be just as bad as actually being guilty of whatever is charged.  It may be impossible to prove your innocence (or motivation), so you never want to have the question raised in the first place.

I’m glad that ethical behavior is very rarely a problem in Toastmasters, but even one time is too much.  Consider what you would do in a hypothetical situation before the real one comes up, so you can objectively consider your response.  Feel free to answer the poll below, it’s as anonymous as I can make it, though your IP address is logged.  Add your own experiences in the comments.

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