While you might argue that the book's very title is an oxymoron, The Ethical Executive, by Robert Hoyk and Paul Hersey, is instead a fabulous and practical text that may as well have been titled, "How Not to be Kenneth Lay," and its faithful application could have prevented our entire current economical crisis. Having dutifully passed my requirement of Ivy League MBA ethics coursework and been duly unimpressed by its ability to stop unethical behavior (as I learn from this book, even in my own generally honest self), I would recommend that business schools, university political science and marketing programs, and even small business owners and parents adopt this as the primary ethics text.

The problem, as authors describe in the introductory chapters, is that ethics aren't acquired from our education. Discussing a case study in class -- even if it's at Harvard Business School (especially if it is?) -- does not "teach" ethics. No, our parents teach us ethics. And as Hoyk and Hersey write, "what is most lacking in books on ethics is a major emphasis on the root causes of unethical behavior--psychological dynamics." In order for a typical person, with typical familial upbringing and core values, to behave ethically does not call for a strategy for thinking about an ethical problem (the approach taken by traditional ethics textbooks); no, the authors argue, it takes knowledge of the potential "ethical traps" you might encounter. Awareness equals ethical power. Managers (and parents, teachers, whomever) can "use their understanding to objectify what's happening to them."

Hoyk and Hersey lay out 45 ethical traps and give examples of psychological research and real-life ethical foulups, from Enron to Worldcom to Jim Jones. I recognized nearly every one from my life, both in business and in my relationships with my infamously principle-bereft in-laws. What's more, I recognized the traps in the behavior of the key figures in the financial meltdown.