Typically efforts to address values and ethics in business education and leadership development tend to focus on building Awareness and teaching Analysis. That is, we expose future leaders to the kinds of ethical and values conflicts they may encounter, so that they will recognize them and will have considered them in advance.

Often we fail to voice and act on our values because, before we even apply our best thinking to developing an action plan, we engage in process of "pre-emptive rationalization." At some deep level, we anticipate difficulty and resistance so we start to back away from our own instinctive values perspective.

The whole endeavor becomes less about a constraint on action and rather about helping us to be more of who we would actually like to be, at our best and if we felt it were possible. Rather than positioning effort as being about "thou shalt not," it becomes all about "can do!"

I am most comfortable in a "learner" role, I may raise my values-related concerns by asking the well-crafted and well-timed question, rather than by strenuously arguing a particular point of view. Or if I am a risk-taking, aggressive manager, I may frame the values conflict as just one more challenge that I want to take on, as opposed to a "constraint" on my action choices.

By creating explicit occasions to invite dissenting viewpoints on a new project, strategy or policy, leaders enable employees to feel that their questions are welcomed and appreciated.

Time pressures are a reality of business life that cannot be eliminated entirely and that even can create a beneficial focus at times, it can be powerful to set aside discrete occasions where individuals are invited to step back, to look at their projects from different vantages, to consider input not usually examined, and so on. This again encourages folks to express alternative points of view.

Communicating and celebrating the times when individuals have made values-based decisions is, of course, empowering and can provide role models. But perhaps more importantly, it removes the sense of futility that often prevents employees from speaking up.