And any final comments? For sure, I always have final comments, even when I’m right!!
A very interesting conversation emerged around two topics that shared the common issue of awareness. One was the question of whether self-awareness is counter-productive to moral awareness and does this lead to the loss of the selfless leader? The other aspect of the discussion was the intersection of self-knowledge and ethics — what can leadership development contribute to ethics education?

In the first instance it was argued that with the shift towards more secularism at the expense of faith-driven ethics, there has become a concomitant over-emphasis on the self. This in turn can encourage the development of negative character traits such as entitlement, narcissism, victimization and lack of respect and dignity for others. Such traits become particularly harmful when exhibited by those in leadership roles. The proponent in this conversation suggested that such character flaws are facilitated in rising leaders through the excessive use of personality assessments in academia. In part this is due because these assessments reinforce the newly developed norm of self-focus, thus preventing up-and-coming leaders from grasping the true essence of effective leadership: selfless behaviour and engagement of the other. Self has grown to replace the spiritual other that once guided the resolution of moral issues — thus it is important to resurrect ethical reasoning as a necessary skill for future leaders.

This all played to the second conversant who suggested that leadership development must inform and support ethics education in a mutual hybrid fashion. The argument was not so much that no self-assessments should be done, but that they should be conducted by qualified professionals so that any self-insights need to make the prospective young leader aware of one’s own values and that one should claim ownership of those values as part of one’s identity. By enriching their identities as moral actors, young leaders can then better frame the inputs to be gained from studying more traditional sources of moral philosophy.

There also were some good conversations around scientific freedom and responsibility as well as integrity in research ethics. It was fascinating to discover that in spite of statements affirming the primacy of scientific freedom, the concomitant commitment to responsibility for ethical use of that freedom is not always evident. Furthermore it would seem that the most frequent miscreant dissonance between statement and action occurs right within the academy. Many ethical guidelines do not, in an of themselves, exert a sense of discipline that maintains a consistency within a faculty, or a study group or even a supervisor’s approach to her/his different graduate students.

The “keynote” plenary session on Friday morning was a welcome change: it was a panel. And it was not just any panel — it focused on ethics and government. The participants were thoughtful and informative, not afraid to look at issues from multiple perspectives and even admit occasionally when they themselves had not been able to totally achieve all that they might have. It was a very dynamic conversation that was followed by a Q+A that was equally compelling for the insights it gave. On the panel was a Cook County Attorney, the executive director of the city of Chicago’s Board of Ethics, the president and CEO of World Business Chicago, the director of the Neiswanger Institute for Bio-Ethics & Health Policy at Loyola University and a professor in political science from the University of Illinois at Chicago. The combined intelligence was immense — the fact that they seldom even had to refer to their notes kept everyone listening and engaged. It was so much better than the Weil opening lecture and so much more relevant to APPE. It was a good model for any conference to adopt — I only hope that more of these panels begin to grace the agenda of APPE going forward.

There were a couple of interesting panels that were part of the regular sessions. One addressed the growing concern with “who tells your story?” — the issue of ethics in the media (i.e. journalists, citizens, media literacy). It was a good conversation but somewhat more academic and perhaps given the tenor of discussion in the USA a bit predictable. The much more animated conversation occurred in the panel “teaching ethics through philosophical novels”. Wendy Teays of Mount St. Mary’s University had her hands full moderating the trio of Michael Boylan (Marymount U), Deborah Mower (U of Mississippi) and Gabriel Palmer-Fernandez (Youngstown State U). All three were terrific, seldom used notes (even when they had some powerpoint as support), and had the entire room engaged for the full ninety minutes. Each took a very different perspective (on the book which served as the basis for the discussion — it contained three different novels) and each utilized a very distinct (and different) pedagogy. As a result one sitting in the audience learned very quickly all the possibilities such a book could provide for almost any course on ethics. The same material came across is dramatically different fashions — all relevant, all informative, all enjoyable. In actual fact, this should have been another plenary keynote…after all, APPE is supposed to be practical and professional and these three demonstrated that with enthusiasm — the moderator made it work too, right through to the end of the Q+A.

The final highlight of the conference (other than the Ethics Bowl) was the sneak preview of a documentary film titled: “All the Queen’s Horses”. This is the story about a municipal employee who managed to steal $53 million without anyone noticing. It occurs in a small city in Illinois (Dixon) and is the largest case of municipal fraud in American history. She used the funds to build one of the nation’s leading quarter horse breeding empires, all while forcing staff cuts, police budget slashing, and neglect of public infrastructure. It is a film I am going to try to acquire for my classes as it shows, even more than “In it to win — The Jack Abramoff Story”, how vigilant we have to be, even in our communities and how the need for ethics training is across every discipline, every profession,

And that’s about it… the conversations over meals and refreshments were enlightening as usual. There are so many interesting colleagues that come to APPE that time doesn’t permit extended conversation with each. I probably had a dozen in-depth chats over fine scotch or wine or beer or good food, and I still missed out on talking with at least half a dozen others that I had intended to meet with. Good thing there is next year, and in the interim — e-mails, letters and this editorialog.

g.w.