Your ethical reputation is your most valuable professional asset. So how do you build the right muscles to protect it?

Dr Attracta Lagan is a specialist in behaviour ethics, having worked alongside leaders in corporate, not-for-profit and public sector organisations. Here she outlines the seven workplace traps that get used as an excuse for unethical behaviour.

Personal reputations have never been more valuable or vulnerable. How can you protect your reputation in a workplace where time pressure, budget pressure, peer pressure and personal pressure conspire to dull our senses about what is the right thing to do?

Given the ethical dimension that accompanies every action, how do we build our ethical muscle so that we can instinctively use our potential to impact positively or negatively and are alert to the need to take remedial actions to minimise harm? It’s easy to be full of good intentions, but ethics is about doing, not just thinking.