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418 Chapter 12

high-level ethical guideline often built upon the company ’ s culture (e.g., value the
demonstration of social responsibility among their employees, promote recycling,
donating to local charities, paying employees to work on community events) and these
can often be conveyed through good stories. Fences are explicit boundaries that show
exactly where an important ethical line lies (e.g., offi cial company policies on ethics).
These should be ubiquitous as policies defi ne the fence; the procedures defi ne operat-
ing within the limits of the ethical fence. DMZs are concerned with active compliance
monitoring (e.g., monitoring of software licenses). They defi ne exactly where the
ethical line is and prevent employees from crossing the ethical line in order to monitor
and report any violations.
Managing ethical liabilities involves four major processes:

Prevention Using codes of conduct, standard operating practices ,and providing land-
marks, fences, and DMZs
Detection Using automated systems to enforce and monitor ethical compliance and
to verify appropriate use of company assets
Reporting Where employees able to report unethical behaviors (whistleblowers)
without suffering any retaliation
Investigations Often require outside assistance in order to be thorough, fair, and
neutral
The challenge is, once again, a question of establishing and maintaining a dynamic
balance — too much monitoring and regulation can lead to a lack of innovation. Orga-
nizations must be able to continue rewarding and motivating innovative and creative
behaviors but this cannot be at the expense of cutting corners so drastically that ethical
values become compromised.
What is needed is a KM code of ethics to help govern the professional practice of
knowledge management work. A number of good examples exist that can serve as a
basis or starting point and a great deal of work is being done on this issue by the
KMCI (Knowledge Management Certifi cation Institute, http://www.kmci.org/). A good
illustration is the code of ethics developed for health science librarians (http://www
.mlanet.org/about/ethics.html) shown in table 12.2 .
Another good example exists in the U.S. Federal Government, particularly in the
forestry sector. A list of key questions is used to assess and monitor the ethical health
of the organization, such as, do senior leaders generate high levels of motivation
and commitment in the workforce and promote ethical behavior through modeling,
communication, training, accountability systems, and disclosure mechanisms?
Some performance indicators that are used include the promotion of teamwork, con-