What's your MoralDNA™?
ICAS has teamed up with the market-leading global behavioural profile provider, MoralDNA™, to help members discover workplace culture and values, as well as gaining a new level of personal insight
When you start work each morning, are you thinking about your core values and how you will make each decision? Are you sure you are always doing the right thing, in and out of work?
Through their ethical behaviour, CAs are a force for good in the organisations in which they work, and ICAS recognises the power of every individual CA – The Power of One – to influence those around them.
From global corporations to individuals, professionals from over 200 countries are accessing MoralDNA™.
ICAS is calling on every CA to place ethical leadership at the heart of their professional responsibilities, to shape the culture and values of their organisations, to help re-establish ethics at the core of business practice, and to rebuild public trust in business. Are you sure about how to deal with an ethical matter or embrace opportunities to provide ethical leadership to others?
What is MoralDNA?
The ICAS Ethics Board is endorsing the leading online profiling assessment, MoralDNA™, which will be free of charge for all of our members around the world, and becomes a key part of The Power of One.
Aside from providing our members with a clear snapshot of their ethics preferences, we will quantify the preferences of our membership towards different aspects of ethical behaviours, compared against leaders and managers from a range of sectors all over the world.
From global corporations to individuals, professionals from over 200 countries are accessing MoralDNA™; to discover their workplace culture and values, as well as gaining a new level of personal insight.
Co-designed by the ‘Corporate Philosopher’, Professor Roger Steare, MoralDNA™ can reveal your decision-making preferences, and will be used to quantify the preferences of our membership towards different aspects of ethical behaviour: the ethics of Obedience, Care and Reason. The tool will even measure ‘who you are personally’, against ‘who you are at work’ to see how you adapt to different situations.
I think that management teams in businesses look at their behaviour much more seriously, and in a more challenging way, than they would have done in the past - especially since the banking crisis in 2008.
Chair of the ICAS ethics board and former ICAS president, Norman Murray CA, has a distinguished career of business leadership roles, including chair positions with Cairn Energy and Petrofac, and is currently chair of The Edrington Group and Scottish Ballet.
Mr Murray is taking forward The Power of One initiative using his extensive experience in ethical working practices: “Ethics for CAs is paramount; it’s part of our professional training, and I think it’s part of our professional outlook. It’s something that all members of the institute or indeed any profession, have to take seriously, " he said.
“It’s never as clear-cut as you might think – certainly, as people progress through their job roles, the decisions get tougher. You always need to make sure you think carefully and maintain the ethical high-ground.”
I would encourage people to take part on an honest basis, as it does set the scene for you.
Mr Murray first became interested in business ethics when he attended Harvard Business School in 1987. “Business Ethics is something that, in this country, wasn’t talked about at that time. Harvard had a course on it, along with really interesting case studies, and I thought this was something that would certainly develop in the future. And now we’re seeing it develop in the UK in a very serious way.
"I think that management teams in businesses look at their behaviour much more seriously, and in a more challenging way than they would have done in the past - especially since the banking crisis in 2008.
“Over the years I’ve been in business a lot of it has been with international companies, and I have accumulated real practical experience of some of the dilemmas that people can face throughout the course of their career or business lives.”
Member benefits
We asked Mr Murray why ICAS members should take part in MoralDNA™, and what benefits it would bring. “When you do these kinds of profiles, you’re pretty sure of your own inputs, and interested in the outputs. I would encourage people to take part on an honest basis, as it does set the scene for you.
“If you’ve got a certain style or a certain way of looking at things, it might be more difficult to change behaviour, but I think it does provide a good benchmark and a good tool which helps one to sense-check or benchmark your own activities with what ‘good’ looks like and what ‘bad’ looks like.
MoralDNA™ might help others recognise their behaviours and give them an opportunity to take some action to improve their comparison against benchmarks.”
Is this relevant for our members at every age and stage of their careers? “I think things change over time; when I think back to when I first worked abroad in the 1970s, there were very different attitudes to now. It’s important that people keep up with positive trends, not negative trends, and make sure that they’re adapting to these.
“No doubt the results of this tool might change as circumstances do, so I think for these reasons it’s a good tool to complete, whether you’re a student or whether you’re someone who has had a long and distinguished career. You can make sure that you’re meeting what looks like a good benchmark.”
Upon completion, you will receive your own personalised analysis and be able to discover your ethical preferences in order to make good decisions and do the right thing. Data is securely and privately held.