You may be wondering how such a broad and fuzzy issue can possibly apply to your dress shop in downtown Poulsbo or your pet grooming salon in Port Orchard or your restaurant in downtown Bremerton. Yet, business ethics applies to everyone. Larger businesses are much more visible, and tend to have more public investment and complicated structures that can be difficult to police. Running an ethical business is good business — no matter how large or small the company is. So, how do you run an ethical business? The following procedures are gentle reminders of some common practices.

• When a customer gives you their credit card to make a purchase it is handled with the utmost of care.
• Customers’ personal information given to your company is treated confidentially and used only in the manner authorized.
• Customers are being charged a fair price for the goods and services they receive.
• Customers have confidence that the product or service they receive is of the type and quality agreed to in the transaction.
• Mutual trust and respect exists between managers and employees. Employees handle company resources and assets as carefully as they would handle their own, while managers treat employees as valuable assets in their organization.
• Shareholders receive a fair and truthful accounting of the company’s performance on a regular basis. By building a trusting relationship, you help to ensure their future support.

Read the following ethical principles and ask yourself if there is room to improve your own ethical style:

• We choose to honor employment, salary and promotion commitments with our employees every time… integrity.
• We choose fresh seafood over marked down aged seafood for our “fresh catch of the day” …morals.
• We fairly report our income and expenses to the IRS every time… honesty.
• We give our customers an accurate accounting of our billable hours… trustworthiness.
• We accurately represent our skills, accreditations and licenses… principled.

Each of us faces decisions like these and hundreds more each and every day. The answers are unique to each of us. Many of them are not even black and white. We must constantly balance the internal and external environments that influence these decisions. In fact, we sometimes feel like we must balance “ethics” with the hard realities of “getting the job done.” Fortunately for most of us, we are tuned into that inner compass that alerts us when we are in danger of straying off the correct path. Are you listening to the signal?

(Editor’s Note: Wendy Miles, Director of Customized Training and Military Education at Olympic College, oversees the operation of the Kitsap Business Assistance Center (KBAC). For partnership opportunities, contact her at 360-475-7786. For KBAC counseling services and workshops contact Rand Riedrich at 360-307-4220, rriedrich@oc.ctc.edu.).