Page 111 - Between One and Many The Art and Science of Public Speaking

78 Part 1 Foundations

Imagine that you are an executive at a Fortune
100 company making as much as $30,000 per
day in stock options. You hear rumors about
the company’s financial stability at the same
time you watch your Chief Executive offi cer on
TV tell the audience that the company could
not be in better financial health. You hear an-
other rumor that those above you are selling
their stock in the company at the same time the
CEO is encouraging rank and file employees to
buy more. But you say nothing, silenced by the
power, prestige, and financial success you cur-
rently enjoy as a result of your job.
Fast-forward five years. Hundreds of Indiana
University students and faculty are assembled
to hear you give a speech on why you finally
quit the preceding job in disgust, and be-
came one of the biggest whistleblowers in the
history of private industry. Your name is Lynn
Brewer, your Chief Executive Officer was Ken
Lay, and the corporation was a company named
Enron. 2
Far-fetched as this example may seem, it is
the absolute truth. Lynn Brewer’s conscience
finally got the best of her. She gave up the title,
the power, and the money and spilled the
goods on a group of people so greedy that they
bankrupted their company and destroyed the
financial security of the employees who had
trusted them. Now she stood before a group
of students as a public speaker, her purpose
Enron founder Ken Lay was tried and convicted for his straightforward. As the co-founder and CEO
unethical and illegal business practices. of The Integrity Institute, Lynn Brewer was
there to share a cautionary story about ethi-
cal lapses and ruined lives; to warn students
against being seduced by power and money; to convince her audience that
there is no excuse for the kind of unethical behavior in which Enron executives
engaged.
Reading this chapter won’t make you a famous whistleblower, but it can fur-
ther your understanding of what it means “to do the right thing” in general,
and in the public speaking transaction specifi cally. Clearly unethical behavior is
reported daily in our media, and it is easy to become confused about the prin-
ciples that underscore ethics and the practice of these principles in daily life.
We begin with some basic questions that repeatedly come up when discussing
ethics. In the process, we introduce some of the thinking that has been advanced
on the topic of ethics by history’s best minds. We then show how ethics can guide
us in the development as well as delivery of our speeches and in our role as con-
sumers of the information shared in the speeches of others.