Integrity: What is it and why does it matter?

Lawyers, doctors, teachers and all other manner of professionals are often required to demonstrate integrity when applying for roles, but what is “integrity” and why does it matter so much?

Integrity: what is it?

Integrity is sometimes viewed as a sort of moral high ground from which to judge and be judged, but I do not think this is correct. A person is said to have integrity if they made the “right” decision. The rightness of a decision is identified by assessing a person’s conduct against a set of generally accepted principles. This approach is essentially conformist, which gives me great reluctance to accept it as a point of general principle. Integrity is more than this. Integrity is a person’s own moral compass which always points north no matter which direction the person moves. “North”, which represents our goals, is determined by the compass holder, rather than observers. Integrity appears somewhat less noble now, because the likes of Ted Bundy could be said to demonstrate the characteristic abundantly.1 This shouldn’t concern us, however, because as you will see integrity is simply a tool which helps us to achieve our goals. The jittering needle of our own moral compass may guide us across the toughest terrain in the harshest conditions, but it will never help us to set goals because integrity is intuitive while goal-setting is planned and deliberative.

Integrity: why does it matter?

Integrity helps us to achieve our goals. If integrity prevents you from taking necessary steps towards your goals, then you are suffering from internal conflicts — your goals are misaligned. Integrity requires you to think deeply about your goals and reconcile this conflict. If you fail to do this you may still succeed in some of your goals but you will lack integrity.

I did not realise how important integrity was to me until recently. I thought I was more pragmatic than principled, but when questions around integrity arose during the course of my employment, I quickly realised I had to leave my firm and seek employment elsewhere. I also had to reflect deeply on what I was looking for since I did not want to make the same mistake again. I had chosen this law firm for pragmatic reasons — more responsibility, convenient location, opportunity of advancing quickly in my career — and this backfired dramatically within a short space of time. I was doing work which meant little to me in an organisation which didn’t share my values.

On reflection, integrity has caused me much difficulty early in my career. I have a strong sense of justice and a desire to search for the most correct outcome in every situation. Although I consider integrity to be entirely subjective, I think we can work out the “right” or most moral course of action by using reason.2 My views on morality and keen sense of justice are what attracted me to legal studies. This served me well at law school, in the sense that my integrity did not come into conflict with my goals, but things are very different for legal professionals. As a lawyer, or anyone working towards being lawyer, it is a core principle that one has to act in the best interests of the client. If one has the preconception that certain industries are either inherently corrupt or at minimum do little to serve the needs of society as a whole, it becomes extremely difficult to represent clients in those sectors. Integrity cannot guide you because your goals as a lawyer — serving the interests of justice and acting in the best interests of the client — will become misaligned.

There is a powerful argument that, in a system supported by the rule of law, every person is equally entitled to representation. In this sense, one is still serving the goals of justice merely by representing clients, whoever they are. This argument is often depicted in legal television dramas and best exemplified in the case of the criminal defence lawyer. It does not matter that more crimes are committed than reported, criminals commit far more crimes than those for which they are arrested and charged and that the person before you has almost certainly committed some crime. As long as you, as a lawyer, have no direct knowledge of any specific offence committed by your client, you can represent them in that matter. You may even feel a strong duty to do so. Things become more murky when using “technicalities” to get defendants off, but if you believe in the system and a strict adherence to its principles there is no loss of integrity — your dual goals of serving the administration of justice and acting in the best interests of the client are aligned.

I would never feel comfortable representing clients whose work I did not respect or using technicalities and loopholes to secure them advantages I did not think they deserved at the expense of others. I have never been one for the strict adherence to rules either, so I could not justify these actions on the basis that they are permissible within the existing legal framework. I might be happy to collect a pay-cheque for a while, but soon I would feel I was going against my principles. The loss of integrity, my moral compass, would inevitably lead to a great deal of personal dissatisfaction.

I have decided to be much more careful before starting my next permanent role. For the time being, I will do document review, an investigative process which aligns well with my truth-seeking nature. I have worked in this field (typically considered mind-numbingly boring) for 2 years and felt no internal conflict, compare this with lasting only a few weeks at a firm with misaligned values.

Thank you for reading this my first article. I look forward to exploring integrity in further detail and producing more articles on this topic.

What does integrity mean to you? What does integrity mean in your chosen profession? I’d like to hear more about how you deal with internal conflicts?

1https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrity (See footnote 8: Zuckert, Catherine H.; Zuckert, Michael P. (2006). “Strauss — Modernity — America”. The truth about Leo Strauss: political philosophy and American democracy. Chicago; London: The University of Chicago Press. p. 73. ISBN 978–0–226–99332–4.

2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative#Application