WHAT DOES “ETHICAL” ACTUALLY MEAN?
And why it matters more now than it ever has
Ethics compass
In 2017, Smith & Williamson — one of the UK’s most respected financial and professional services firms, founded in 1881 — gave My TrueNORTH the title “The Ethical Coaching Company.”
I want to be clear about what that means. This wasn’t a trade association handing out badges at a conference. This wasn’t a peer group voting for their favourite. Smith & Williamson built their reputation over generations as a firm that doesn’t attach its name to anything lightly. They advise some of the most scrutinised businesses and individuals in the country. They know what rigour looks like. They know what standards look like. And they know what the absence of both looks like.
I didn’t apply for it. I didn’t campaign for it. They looked at how we operate, what we stand for, and how we treat the people we work with — and they called it what it was.
I’ve carried that title with enormous pride, and equal responsibility, every single day since.
But it still brings a question I’m asked more than any other.
“What does ethical coaching actually mean?”
It’s a fair question. And what people are really asking — beneath the surface of it — is: is this just a marketing line, or do you actually mean it?
I mean it. So let me explain precisely what I mean.
FIRST, LET’S CLEAR SOMETHING UP
Most people use the words ethics and morality interchangeably. A few years ago I ran a survey — across social media and a CRM of business owners — with a simple statement: “There is a difference between ethics and morality.” True or false?
76% said true. 18% said false. 5% didn’t know.
Then I asked the 76% who said there IS a difference to explain — concisely — what that difference actually is.
Nobody could.
Which tells you something important. We’re using language that carries enormous weight in business and in life, and most of us couldn’t define it clearly if our reputation depended on it. In some cases, it does.
So here’s my take — because this distinction matters, and it’s the foundation everything else is built on.
Morality is internal. It’s your personal compass. The code you carry inside you, shaped by your upbringing, your background, your community, your experiences. It’s what you feel, instinctively, to be right or wrong. It doesn’t shift much. It’s yours.
Ethics is external. It’s the framework — the deliberately constructed set of principles that guides how decisions get made, especially in professional and organisational contexts. Ethics can be written down. It can be agreed upon. It can be held up and examined.
Here’s the line I keep coming back to:
Ethics is what I believe and say I believe. Morality is what I do. Integrity is what I’ll have — if the two match.
That gap — between what we say we stand for and how we actually behave — is where most business owners quietly live. Uncomfortable territory. Which is exactly why it’s worth examining.
THIS ISN’T ABSTRACT. IT’S YOUR BUSINESS, EVERY DAY.
There’s a tendency, when words like ethics and morality enter the conversation, for people to assume this is philosophical territory. Interesting in a seminar room. Largely irrelevant to the day-to-day reality of running a company.
I’d push back on that hard.
The accidentally successful business owner — the person who set up a business, was good at what they did, got busy, hired in help, and woke up one day running something bigger and more complex than they ever intended — is making ethical decisions constantly. They just don’t always call them that.
Do you take on a client you know isn’t right, because the cash is useful right now? Do you make a promise to an employee you’re not confident you can keep? Do you present your business as more stable or more established than it currently is, because the alternative feels too vulnerable? Do you hold a supplier to terms you know are squeezing them, because you can?
These are ethics. Every single one of them.
And the way you answer them — consistently, under pressure, when nobody is watching and there’s no commercial incentive to do the right thing — is what defines the culture of your business. Whether you’ve written it down or not.
THE TWELVE PRINCIPLES I BUILD EVERYTHING ON
Over years of working with business owners — and long before that, in the Army, where the consequences of ethical failure weren’t measured in lost contracts but in lives — I’ve come back to twelve principles that I believe underpin genuinely ethical leadership. Not as a checklist. Not as a poster for the office wall. As a lived standard.
Honesty. Say what is true. Don’t mislead by omission, overstatement, or selective framing. This sounds obvious. It is also one of the most consistently violated principles in business, because the pressure to present a better version of reality is relentless.
Integrity. Do what you believe is right, even when the pressure to do otherwise is significant. This is the one that gets tested most often — and the one most people discover they’ve compromised only in hindsight.
Promise-keeping. Your word is your bond, or it is nothing. Make commitments you intend to keep. If circumstances change, say so — early, directly, and without dressing it up.
Loyalty. To your people. To your clients. To the commitments you’ve made. Loyalty isn’t blind obedience — it’s a steady, reliable presence that others can depend on. It also means being honest when something isn’t working, rather than quietly disappearing.
Fairness. Exercise authority without arrogance. Don’t exploit mistakes, vulnerabilities, or the power imbalance that comes with being the owner. Treat people with the same consistency you’d want applied to yourself.
Concern for others. Your job is not just to extract value. It’s to create it — for your clients, your team, your community. The business owner who measures success only in what they take out will always be missing something.
Respect. For the dignity, the time, and the contribution of every person who interacts with your business. Full stop.
Law-abiding. I shouldn’t need to write this one. And yet.
Commitment to excellence. Good enough isn’t. This isn’t about perfectionism — it’s about taking the standard seriously, staying informed, and constantly asking whether what you’re delivering is the best version of what you’re capable of.
Leadership. You set the tone. What you permit, you promote. What you model, you multiply. If the ethical standard in your business isn’t what you want it to be, the first place to look is in the mirror.
Reputation and morale. Your reputation is built over years and lost in moments. Guard it — not as a vanity project, but because the people who work for you and the clients who trust you deserve to be associated with something worth being associated with.
Accountability. Own your decisions. Own your mistakes. Don’t outsource the consequences of your choices to the people around you. This is the one that separates leaders from passengers.
These aren’t aspirational. They’re operational. The question isn’t whether you agree with them — most people will. The question is whether you’re actually living them, under pressure, on a Tuesday afternoon when it’s inconvenient and nobody’s watching.
YOUR CODE OF ETHICS. WRITTEN OR NOT, IT EXISTS.
Here’s something most business owners don’t realise: you already have a code of ethics. You just might not have written it down.
Every decision you make — who you hire, who you fire, which clients you take on, which ones you walk away from, how you handle a complaint, how you treat a supplier when they’re struggling — all of it adds up to a code. Your people can read it, even if it’s never been committed to paper. Your clients can feel it. Your competitors can see it.
The question isn’t whether you have a code. The question is whether the code you’re living by is the one you’d be comfortable defending in public.
Writing it down matters — but not for the reasons most people think. The value isn’t in having a document. The value is in the process of creating it. Because sitting down with your leadership team and saying “what do we actually stand for, and what lines will we not cross?” is one of the most clarifying conversations a business owner can have. It surfaces assumptions. It exposes inconsistencies. It forces you to choose.
And when you involve your team in that process — rather than issuing a policy from above and expecting compliance — something shifts. Because people will defend standards they helped create in a way they will never defend standards that were handed to them.
One more thing on this. A code of ethics isn’t a founding document. It’s a living one. Your business changes. The market changes. The pressures on your people change. Your code needs to keep pace — reviewed regularly, held to account by someone with both the authority and the spine to call it out when it’s being breached.
WHAT CHANGED WHEN WE BECAME “THE ETHICAL COACHING COMPANY”
I’ll be honest with you about what happened when Smith & Williamson gave us that title.
The enquiries changed. The clients changed. The conversations changed. People came to us differently — with more openness, more willingness to be honest about what wasn’t working, more readiness to do the hard work rather than look for the quick fix.
And our competitors changed, too, in how they positioned themselves relative to us. Ethics became, for some of them, a word to borrow. A badge to print. A message to carry without the substance to back it up.
Which brings me back to where I started.
I believe — genuinely, not as a marketing position — that we are at the end of the era when appearance was enough. The era when a confident brand, a polished message, and a persuasive sales conversation could carry a business indefinitely regardless of what was actually being delivered.
The business owners I work with have been burned too many times. By suppliers who over-promised. By coaches and consultants who looked the part and delivered nothing. By their own instincts, which told them something wasn’t right and which they ignored because they were too busy, too tired, or too hopeful.
They are not as easy to fool as they once were. And that, frankly, is a good thing.
Know. Like. Trust. Three words that have been in marketing vocabulary for decades. But the only way to earn all three — genuinely, durably, in a way that compounds over time rather than collapsing under scrutiny — is through transparency. Honesty. Vulnerability. A willingness to say this is who we are, this is what we stand for, and this is what you can hold us to.
Ethics isn’t a constraint on commercial success. It’s the foundation of it.
People buy people. They always have. And what they’re buying, beneath the product and the price and the pitch, is trust. The only currency in business that can’t be faked indefinitely.
In arduis fidelis.
Jay Allen | Scale & Exit Mentor | My TrueNORTH Limited | co******@*********th.biz | mytruenorth.club/bfa