“Everything I needed to know
about business ethics
I learned from my parents, my boss and Arthur Ashe”
Remarks of
Thomas N. Chewning
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Dominion
to
Beta Gamma Sigma
McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia
March 22, 2005
Good evening and thank you for inviting me to
speak. It is indeed an honor.
We at Dominion are very exited about our relationship
with the McIntire School and the University of Virginia. Our special bond with
McIntire as a Corporate Partner has been particularly rewarding for us. Our
executives and other employees enjoy the exchange of ideas that occurs whenever
we visit the grounds or when students visit us. Students are not the only ones
doing the learning whenever we get together. It is mutually beneficial. We hope
that you find the relationship as rewarding as we do.
I title my remarks, “Everything I needed
to know about business ethics I learned from my parents, my boss and Arthur
Ashe.” In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit it’s not literally
true. There are many other people who helped me set my moral compass. The real
point of this title is to illustrate that business ethics is a very personal
thing.
You can have all the legislation and all the
regulations you want, but people will always find a way around them if they
want to. Tougher laws are followed by smarter crooks – usually in short
order. It’s honesty that keeps people honest, not laws. As Albert Camus
said, “Integrity has no need of rules.”
It’s not that I am against laws and regulation.
We are a nation of laws. We are a nation of regulations. Most laws and regulations
are very important to the orderly functioning of our society. But there have
always been people who believe that laws and regulations, just like records,
are made to be broken. This didn’t just come about with Enron and WorldCom
and Martha Stewart. It’s not limited to business. It goes all the way
back to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. And it certainly goes back to the
founding of our country. One of the first land deals in the Western Hemisphere
after the arrival of Europeans was a bit of a scam. In one of the few times
where Native Americans came out ahead in one of these transactions, a tribe
from Brooklyn “sold” Manhattan Island to the Dutch even though their
tribal lands didn’t include the island.
I believe that you can’t separate personal
ethics from business ethics. Ethics are ethics. If you have good personal ethics,
you will have good business ethics. You don’t check your personal ethics
coat at the door when you enter the office and put on your business ethics coat.
They are one and the same.
Whatever ethics you adopt from home, school,
at church, synagogue or mosque, and from the community are the ethics you bring
to the office. That’s why what you’re learning here at McIntire
and elsewhere in life is so important to your ethical behavior in the future.
Growing up in Richmond in the 1950s and ‘60s, I was
an active junior tennis player. I played in all of the local tennis tournaments
and knew every good player in the area – or so I thought. Along with local
tennis tournaments, I played in regional events. The man who organized these
tournaments, Bill Riordan, was quite a character. He liked to make up names
of players to fill in when there was an open spot in a tournament draw. His
favorite was Stan Stanspensak, a 6’6” Polish entry. Instead of writing
the word “bye” on a tournament board when there wasn’t a player
for that slot, he would write in Stanspensak or some other fictitious name.
After a while, I got pretty good at spotting his made-up players.
In 1959, when I was 14, I went to the Middle Atlantic tennis
tournament in Wheeling, W.Va. As I was looking at the seeding chart for the
18-and-under division, I saw the name “Arthur Ashe, Jr. - Richmond, VA.”
I went over to Mr. Riordan and said, “This time you’ve gone too
far. I know every tennis player in Richmond and there is no one named Arthur
Ashe.” Mr. Riordan looked at me said, “Tom, there certainly is an
Arthur Ashe from Richmond. Come with me and I’ll introduce you.”
So, I followed Mr. Riordan. He took me to a table where Arthur was sitting.
When I saw him, I knew right away why I had never heard of him. My heart sank.
I learned we had been born just a mile apart and we were living
only four miles from each other. But I had never known Arthur Ashe, this incredible
tennis player, even existed. That’s how it was then. Arthur was never
allowed to play in any of the tournaments in Richmond reserved for white players.
Arthur was a couple years older than me, about 16 at the time.
He was a very good tennis player, although it wasn’t until he went to
UCLA that he really blossomed. I sat down at the table with him and we talked
for quite a while. He was very gracious, even as a young man. I told him where
I lived and he said he knew the house. He had helped his father cut a neighbor’s
grass a few doors away.
At the end of the tournament, Arthur asked if I wanted to
hit with him when we got back to Richmond. Things being what they were, Arthur
said I had better ask my parents first. A white player and black player playing
together just wasn’t done in Richmond during segregation. I asked my parents,
and they said yes. This is one of those events that you don’t realize
is so important until later. My parents knew that my playing tennis with a black
man wouldn’t be a popular thing. They knew there were risks. At the very
least, we could be criticized or ostracized by our neighbors and friends if
they found out. As it was, Arthur’s father had to arrange for a “safe”
place for us to play, away from everyone. None of the public courts would have
us.
But my parents said yes. They knew right from wrong and they
knew that teaching me right from wrong was important. So I went to hit with
Arthur and we became friends. Saying “yes” that day was one of the
greatest gifts my parents ever gave me.
As he got a little older, Arthur became frustrated that he
had to travel so far to play in tournaments. Eventually he accepted an offer
from a tennis official to live with him in St. Louis, where he finished high
school. Arthur and I stayed friends. He went to UCLA. A couple of years later,
I was fortunate enough to be able to play for UNC.
At UCLA, Arthur became the NCAA men’s tennis champion.
He went on to win three Grand Slam singles titles, play on the Davis Cup team
11 times and be the only African-American man to win the U.S. Open. He was the
world’s top-ranked men’s player in 1968 and 1975.
Arthur’s accomplishments off the court were every bit
as impressive. He was an outspoken supporter of the oppressed. He was an adamant
foe of apartheid. He was arrested in front of the South African Embassy in Washington
for protesting against this inhumane system. He was arrested again, this time
in front of the White House, for pushing for human rights in Haiti. Arthur was
the first man that Nelson Mandela asked to meet when he was released after 27
years in prison.
Arthur also embraced other causes, ranging from becoming the
chairman of the National Heart Association to promoting educational opportunities
for children. He probably could have been a wealthier man financially had he
focused only on tennis and making money, but his actions made him a far-richer
man.
Arthur learned in 1988 that he was HIV-positive. He had contracted
the virus from a blood transfusion when he had open-heart surgery a few years
earlier. He kept the news quiet, in part because of the stigma of the time and
the desire to keep life normal for his young daughter. He went public with the
fact that he had AIDS in April 1992, only after USA Today said it was preparing
to run a story about it. Ironically, the journalistic profession is still debating
today the ethics of whether the newspaper should have disclosed the illness
against Arthur’s wishes.
Just after Arthur’s illness became public, the city
of Richmond decided to erect a statue of Arthur. I eventually became the co-chairman
of the fund-raising drive. I asked Arthur why he would support having a statue
of him erected in Richmond after the way he had been treated by the community
earlier in his life. He said, “Just because they turned their back on
me, I don’t have to turn my back on them.” That was vintage Arthur.
He died not long after, on February 6, 1993.
Even though it was the 1990s, the idea of erecting a statue
of a black man in Richmond was not popular. “Firestorm” might be
a better word to describe it when a plan was discussed to erect the statue on
the city’s Monument Avenue. The tree-lined boulevard gets its name from
the fact that there are statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and three
other Confederate heroes spaced along its path. Many people black and white
– including many of Richmond’s business, social and civic leaders
– opposed the location for various reasons. I supported it because there
was no greater hero in my eyes than Arthur Ashe. Putting his statue in line
with Confederate leaders would show just how far Richmond had come without turning
our back on our earlier history.
Before agreeing to help lead the fund-raising effort, I went
to my boss, Tom Capps. I really wanted to do it. But having me help lead the
campaign was something that could potentially hurt Dominion. In the course of
doing business, our company had to interact with many of the business and community
leaders who were vehemently opposed to the statue and its location. I was prepared
for the personal attacks, late-night telephone calls and even physical threats.
But I didn’t want to expose my employer to potential harm. I asked Tom
if he had any problem with my becoming involved. Tom didn’t hesitate.
He said, “Absolutely not. It’s the right thing to do. Go do it.”
One of Tom’s best traits is the courage of his convictions. He decides
what’s right and charges ahead, regardless of what other people think.
So, with his blessing, I went ahead.
The statue did eventually get erected on Monument Avenue.
It was dedicated on July 10, 1996, on what would have been Arthur’s 53rd
birthday and a little more than three years after his death. At his request,
the statue shows Arthur standing with a tennis racquet in his left hand down
low and books held high in the right. He wanted to dramatize the superiority
of knowledge over sports. He’s in tennis sweats and there are children
sitting at his feet, looking up in admiration. Once again, this feature was
requested by Arthur as he wanted to emphasize that children look up to those
in the spotlight as role models. I recommend that you visit the statue if you
are ever in Richmond. It is a very powerful piece of art and social commentary.
So, what did I learn from my parents, my boss and Arthur Ashe
about business ethics?
From my parents, I learned that all people are God’s
children and they should be treated as such wherever you encounter them. When
my parents said “yes” to allow me to play with Arthur Ashe, they
were teaching me a lesson. It doesn’t matter what color a person’s
skin is, or where he or she was born. People are people. They should be treated
with respect and dignity. Because of that lesson, I had one of the most important
friendships of my life. I profited from it immensely - not financially, but
in personal terms. I would have been a much poorer person today had my parents
said “no” and I had never gotten to know Arthur Ashe.
Today, companies call this life lesson “diversity”
or “equal opportunity.” Companies that have good ethics understand
that their employees, their customers, their shareholders and their communities
deserve to be treated with respect and dignity at all times. They find strength
in and benefit from our individual differences and various viewpoints. Companies
that value diversity say “yes” when asked to be involved with people
who aren’t like them.
From my boss, I learned about the courage of your convictions.
Tom Capps may not always be right – not that I like to tell him that –
but he always does what he believes is right. His heart has to be in it before
he’s willing to do something. If his heart is in it, there is nothing
you can do to stop him. It didn’t matter to Tom that a lot of influential
people might not like my being involved with the Arthur Ashe statue campaign.
All that mattered was that it was the right thing to do.
At the media company Gannett, the corporate credo for many
years was, “Do the right thing.” At first, that sounds too simplistic
to be useful. But the next time you face an ethical dilemma, tell yourself to
do the right thing and see what happens. Most problems resolve themselves when
you ask that question and follow what you know is right.
Finally, what did I learn about business ethics from Arthur
Ashe? It would be shorter to list what I didn’t learn from Arthur. Let
me offer just two things. First, I learned from Arthur that you could be the
best in your profession and still have integrity. People who say you need to
have a little larceny in your heart to succeed in business are dead-wrong. Arthur
was a great tennis player who played by the rules. He got to the top by overcoming
many hurdles, including racial discrimination and losing his mother, Mattie,
when he was only 6 years old. He didn’t have the hardest serve, wasn’t
the fastest player, or possess the most God-given talent. In fact, a mention
about Arthur in Sports Illustrated in 1963 called him, “a slender 19 and
still a few pounds short of the weight needed for complete tennis excellence.”
That was the year he won the Southern California intercollegiate tennis singles
championship. Two years later, he was the NCAA champion. I don’t believe
that steroids were prevalent in professional and collegiate sports at the time
Arthur was playing. But if they were, I am certain that Arthur never would have
given a moment’s thought about using them to enhance his performance.
First, he understood his responsibility as a role model too much to put children
at risk by emulating such dangerous behavior. And second, it just wasn’t
Arthur to use artificial means to enhance his performance. Arthur got to the
top through old-fashioned hard work, grit, determination and making the most
out of the talent he had. Arthur always played within the rules, never cheated
on line calls and maintained his grace and dignity even in the tightest matches.
That works in any line of business.
I also learned from Arthur that those who succeed in their
careers have an obligation to use that success to do good outside of the office
and the company. It’s not enough to do well in business. If you succeed
there, you need to leverage financial resources, personal contacts and the other
things that come with success to do more than make money. Henry Ford said it
well when he said, “A business that makes nothing but money is a poor
kind of business.” Because of his success on the tennis court, Arthur
was able to have a huge impact in important issues around the globe. Nobody
was going to pay any attention to some scrawny, unknown kid from Richmond, no
matter how just his cause. But they paid a great deal of attention to Arthur
Ashe, world-champion tennis player, when he spoke up about injustice in South
Africa and Haiti, or about the need to provide more opportunities for inner-city
kids in the United States.
I have tried to follow that course in my own life. I have
enjoyed a very fortunate business career. This allows my wife, Nancy, and me
to support our church, alma mater and numerous non-profit organizations. Because
of my business position, I am able to direct resources and garner attention
for good causes that I wouldn’t be able to do otherwise.
It would be easy for you at this point in your studies to
be very cynical and distrustful of business. It seems that every day brings
a new disclosure of another business scandal. The companies involved in these
scandals are – or, at least were – among the most-respected names
in business. In addition to the likes of Enron and WorldCom, there have been
Tyco, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Arthur Anderson and even Krispy Kreme. The
list goes on and on.
I want to ask you tonight that if you are cynical about America’s
business ethics, try to hold that cynicism in abeyance until you spend some
time on the inside of business. I can’t promise that you won’t meet
some suspicious characters once you start your professional career. You probably
already have met some of these characters in your summer jobs and internships
or even within the McIntire School. But I think you will find that the vast
majority of people in American business are honest, hard-working people who
care about doing a good job and doing it within the law. The scoundrels are
the exceptions, not the rule. That’s what I have seen in more than 35
years in the business world.
Although it may sound strange, I take it as good news that
there are publicly reported scandals and that they do outrage people. As I said
earlier, there have been scandals throughout history. There have been people
breaking the law for as long as there have been laws. The real test of a society
is whether it is serious about unearthing corruption and what it does about
it when corruption is found. I’m not happy that some companies have misstated
their earnings or cooked the books in some other way. But I take comfort that
it is still front-page news. When it moves to the back pages or it doesn’t
make news at all, then we’re in trouble.
I’m not thrilled about Sarbanes-Oxley, especially section
404. It has put a tremendous burden on Dominion and thousands of other companies.
We have spent millions of dollars complying with Sarbanes and we will spend
many millions more. I don’t know that our investors have gotten their
money’s worth out of it in terms of better financial reporting. But I
am glad that Congress cared enough about the problems we faced with financial
reporting that it took some kind of action. Many of today’s scandals are
scandals because there are new laws. It’s not that American business got
so much worse. In many cases, it’s that businesses are now required to
report more about what they were doing. And, again, the good news is that there
are people on the inside reporting it. The bad news would have been if these
laws were passed and everyone ignored them. It may sound ludicrous, but that’s
how it works in many other countries.
When you move into the business world, make it your personal
responsibility to live up to your own code of ethics. While it is good that
companies have ethics programs and codes of conduct, they won’t mean anything
unless you take personal responsibility for your actions. Do the right thing,
as they say at Gannett. And, if you encounter something that’s wrong,
work to correct it. If you don’t, you are a contributor to the wrongdoing.
English writer and philosopher Edmund Burke was right on target when he said,
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”
The lessons that my parents, my boss and Arthur Ashe taught
me have served me well. They have served me well in my business life and in
my personal life. As I said in the beginning, you cannot separate your personal
ethics from your professional ethics.
I hope you were blessed with parents as good as mine. I hope
that your future bosses will believe in doing the right thing and have the courage
of their convictions. And I hope that you have your own Arthur Ashe. Knowing
Arthur opened my eyes to new ideas and new principles. Knowing Arthur also presented
me with new challenges. Confronting those challenges made me a better businessman
and a better person.
You never know when you will find your Arthur Ashe. His name
could be staring back at you the next time you look at a sheet of paper. He
or she could be sitting next to you tonight. The most important thing to do
when your Arthur Ashe asks if you’d like to hit with him is to say “yes”
- no matter what challenges it might bring. You will be better for it. Your
employer will be better for it. And our world will be better for it.
Thank you for allowing me to make these personal remarks.
I hope they will assist you to reflect on your own experiences and to develop
clear, sound personal ethics.
