SECRETARIAL ETHICS

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 283, 27 August 1935, Page 13

SECRETARIAL ETHICS

Weight of Responsibility

“The New Zealand Institute of Secretaries gathers into its membership men who carry a heavy weight of responsibility, who render a vast amount of indispensable service to the community, and enjoy the trust and confidence of the people,” said the Rev. Canon Percival James when speaking to the members of the institute at a special service at St. Paul’s Pro-Cathedral on Sunday. “It can render a valuable service,” he continued, “in assisting to maintain and advance a high standard ot professional ethics and commercial honesty. It is not uncommon to be confronted with the assertion that it is impossible to bring into present-day business relations the strict eanons of probity that governed the business practice of our forefathers. I deprecate such a sweeping statement, which betrays, I .think, a failure to appreciate modern business conditions. Under simpler conditions of trade and industry, the choice was plain and simple between right and wrong, between a better course and a worse.

“But few men work to-day under simple conditions. Combined and interlocked in the complex mechanism of modern business, involved in the inter-action Qf so many conflicting interests, the modern business man has not the same plain issues which faced his predecessors His action must frequently be determined hot by a clear choice between right and wrong, but by a careful balancing of a multitude of considerations. God knows it is desperately hard for every one of us, in some circumstances, to know what is best to be done. Not infrequently our choice lies between two evils, and we must choose the lesser. Modern business requires a high level of integrity. Interdependent as we are, our complex system could not hold together if we could not trust people generally to do what they engage themselves to do. “I am far from saying that we ought to be satisfied with bur general level of rectitude. Recent experience should rather move us to search our hearts, and to exercise constant vigilance, lest there creep in among us a general relaxation of principles of integrity, and an unreadiness to discharge covenanted obligations. The Englishman’s word has been his bond. His trustworthiness has won respect for him, wherever he has gone. The moral probity of the British merchant has carried our commerce over the. face of the globe.. God grant that no British people may forfeit this reputation for fair dealing. Let us tre-asure our standatd of honour as more precious than our standard of