The Conscience Code

The young professionals' real-world guide to achieving success at work without compromising integrity, based on Wharton Business School professor Richard Shell's countless interactions with MBA students who continue to bring him shocking stories about the workplace corruption they are pressured to engage in.

Forty-one percent of workers across a variety of industries reported seeing ethical misconduct in the past year alone.From corporate frauds and global bribery to bosses pressuring employees to engage in illicit sexual relations with clients, young professionals are completely unprepared for the stark reality of workplace misconduct and corruption. They are being blindsided by ethical conflict, then forced to make anguished choices between their paycheck and their values.

Finding Your Voice, Choosing to Lead shows that there is a third way: assume these conflicts are coming, learn how to recognize them, and follow a step-by-step approach to responding effectively. In this way, young professionals set themselves on the path to becoming leaders of conscience.

Finding Your Voice, Choosing to Lead:

• Solves a crucial problem faced by young professionals: What should they do when they are asked to compromise their core values to achieve organizational goals?
• Teaches readers how to recognize and overcome five pervasive forces pushing them toward misconduct: peer pressure, misguided authority, perverse incentives created by aggressive work goals, role expectations, and systemic corruption.
• Provides a simple, by-by-step model for business professionals at all levels to maintain their integrity while advancing their careers.
• Uses vivid case studies to walks readers through how they could have been resolved successfully using the principles and methods outlined in the book.

Finding Your Voice, Choosing to Lead features stark examples from Shell's classroom, today's headlines, and classic cases of corporate wrongdoing countered by individual moral courage, presenting a roadmap for taking on toxic bosses and creating values-based workplaces where everyone can thrive.