The week this print edition went to press, Bloomberg had run yet another story drawing a line between business schools and high-profile ethics failures.

Focusing on former Enron chief executive Jeff Skilling, who—the reporter went out of her way to mention—had an MBA from Harvard, the article also touched on the higher education and honorary degrees of Bernie Ebbers, Martha Stewart and others.

I would have found the article hilarious if it wasn't so misguided.

It assumed what a number of Americans must believe, that higher education and ethics are connected: "How could a Harvard MBA behave so unethically?"

You're kidding me.

That's like asking, 'How could the country that gave us Beethoven give us Auschwitz?'

It's a stupid question. One has nothing to do with the other.

The brilliant composers (and proto-Nazis) Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss gave us an answer to a similar question 40 years ago: Musical genius does not equate to moral greatness.

And higher education does not equate to moral greatness, either.

Just look at the newspapers—for two years they've been filled with accusations of incredibly smart people doing incredibly selfish things at Adelphia, Boeing, Coca-Cola, Duke Energy, Enron, Global Crossing, ImClone, KMart, Lucent, Merrill Lynch, Network Associates, Omnicom, Peregrine, Perot Systems, Qwest, Reliant Resources, Shell, Symbol Technologies, Tyco, Unify, WorldCom, Xerox, and others.

There is no relationship between education and human decency. L.A. talk show host Dennis Prager, quoting a friend of Justice Louis Brandeis, said it best: "You can be a Ph.D, and an S.O.B."

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not opposed to education or advanced degrees (and my alma mater is nothing to sneeze at). And I'm certainly glad that business schools like Harvard, Wharton and others have recently started or strengthened ethics requirements.

But ethical teaching does not guarantee ethical conduct, any more than learning about safety would ensure we act safely.

At a conference on ethics last year, Wake Forest University President Dr. Thomas Hearn Jr. acknowledged that fact: "Courses in ethics do not produce ethical persons."

That's because ethical failures are rarely the result of a lack of education. The volley of emails between Shell executives regarding overstated oil reserves is living proof of that—their errors were not one of ignorance.

They knew just what they were doing.

They may not have liked it, but they fully understood it.

Or as Dr. Hearn put it, "The cause is often not moral ignorance; it is rather more often moral failure."

At an ethics conference two years ago, UNC-Chapel Hill business school professor Robert Adler noted that "Good ethics requires great courage." And he's right. Most rules tell you what you can't do—they don't tell you what you should do.

And what you should do is usually the hard part.

That's why I can appreciate the comments of University of Pittsburgh Business School dean Fred Winter, who recently told a reporter that the school had dropped its ethics requirement in favor of steeping every class with ethics.

For true leaders, ethics are steeped and ingrained in their daily lives. It's fundamentally important to them, and they make it important to their organizations.

It's part of their DNA, not their M.B.A.

SEC Comissioner Roel Campos said in a 2002 speech that "having a code of ethics that is not vigorously implemented is worse than not having a code of ethics. It smacks of hypocrisy."

In other words, it has to permeate everyone.

Or put another way: It's not what you've learned, it's how you act.

Higher education is important, but it has to be put in context. It simply means we got good grades—not that we should suddenly be equated with Andre Sakharov.

The column solely reflects the views of its author, and should not be regarded as legal advice. It is for general information and discussion only, and is not a full analysis of the matters presented.

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