Silence & Complicity

This is a very difficult ethical area to reason.

Two businessmen and a mutual client are discussing a project with a prospective client. One is a venture capitalist and the other a manufacturing CEO. They are in the process of sealing the deal when the client asks for reassurances that the venture capitalist is a fair and above board businessman. The manufacturer senses a disparity between what the CEO says and rumors he has had lately about one of the statements the CEO has made. The momentum of the deal is such that to scuttle it over a rumor is imprudent. Given all the positive aspects of the CEO's past, the manufacturer down plays the rumors. Moreover, to intercede in the negotiations and challenge the CEO crosses a very distinct line in business that says "mind your own business." It would be nice if the world were such a simple place where virtue were always rewarded. Businesses take years and even decades to build. One false more and a business can be destroyed or damaged. If virtue becomes the guiding principle in business, predators will flourish because the vulnerability of the public to clever deceptions of business people will have remained the same. It seems better, for all the manufactures faults here, that is better for him to stay in business and promote a business that is straight forward and honest, than scuttle his business over principles conceived in the peace and quiet of a university away from the realities of life.