What is the impact on your organization when employees and leaders do not do what they say they are going to do? There are so many companies today that have a vision or mission statement that includes the word integrity, yet it’s unclear what that means to the people in those organizations.

Take, for instance, Goldman Sachs who has recently been accused of benefiting from both sides of a deal (heads I win, tails you lose). Goldman Sachs business principles: “Integrity and honesty are at the heart of our business. We expect our people to maintain high ethical standards in everything they do, both in their work for the firm and in their personal lives.” Is a “win at all costs” strategy consistent with this business principle?

Integrity has three definitions according to the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary:
1) an unimpaired condition: soundness.
2) firm adherence to a code of especially moral or artistic values: incorruptibility.
3) the quality or state of being complete or undivided: completeness.

We live in a world that is constantly changing and there are times when we can’t keep our word. It’s important to take this into consideration when defining integrity. When we know we are not going to keep our word, we need to “own up” by admitting that we will no longer be able to honor our commitments. Without this culture of openness and accountability in honoring one’s word, we really don’t have integrity.

It’s difficult for most of us to think of integrity without thinking right/wrong, good/bad, true/false. Ethics and morals are important to groups we belong to like Legal Ethics, Engineering Standards, or Societal Codes of Conduct where there needs to be clear boundaries of what is right and what is wrong. Integrity for our purposes is more like the Law of Gravity. It just is. It’s more like a law of human nature.