Bankers, Business and the Oath ...Why Something Much More Will Be Needed

Apparently it's time for bankers to take the Hippocatic Oath - you know, the one doctors take.

You can find the proposal discussed in the Guardian, Banking Oath ... And in more detail at ResPublica Document. I think this is an important and worthwhile contribution to thinking on a very important topic.

But then, why stop at bankers? Why not ask everyone in business to do the same? Banking isn't unique? And what would happen if directors of, say tobacco companies, refined sugar producers, or bomb makers had to swear an oath "to do no harm"?

Of course there is one massive difference between bankers, businesses and medics .... Your doctor has to be qualified to do the job ...

Now I know that Graucho said something like "what do you call the guy who passes out bottom of his class at medical school? .... Doctor" ....  But the truth is Doctors do have to be qualified and they are firmly members of a professional community.

It is just not the same in banking and business.

I have heard, seen and read so, so many business leaders disparaging business education - preferring the school of life and all that: "those who can do, those who can't teach" and so on ....

You never hear this from Doctors .... They never say, "forget all that crap from four centuries of studying human anatomy, physiology, pathology, pharmacology, virology ... forget all of those dull and boring 'ologies ... just give me a scalpel and let me in there ..."  You just never, never hear it ....

But in business, it is respectable to be disparage learning, respectable to wing it, respectable to be utterly unqualified and part of no professional community whatsoever ...

Now (and Sumantra Ghoshal nailed this quite brilliantly in my view: see Bad Management Theories) Business Schools bear lots of the blame for this, but not all of it. The way we in our society respect ignorance in business and even glorify it is also part of the problem ...

We need a better community of practice around just what organisational leadership and business leadership is. Oaths "to do no harm" would be pointless without the ability to see and understand the harm we may be doing.

Harm in business, banking or not, isn't just a matter of harm to this one patient, it would have to be more systemic, or we can be "ethical" and still go to hell in the proverbial handcart ...

I am all for business being ethical, trusted and professional. Let's start by recognizing it isn't just bankers that are struggling for credibility here