Everyone has bad experiences to relate. We deal with a business, determine that we were treated shabbily therefore that business has no integrity. Or perhaps we disagree on implementation of a refund, hence business or owner has no ethics.

Rather than using ethics or integrity to describe business practices, a better definition might be "character".

My dusty old copy of Webster's New World Dictionary provides following definitions for use in this context:

>ethics...the study of standards of conduct and moral judgment; moral philosophy.

>integrity...the quality or state of being of sound moral principle; uprightness, honesty, and sincerity.

>character...an individual's pattern of behavior or personality; moral constitution. moral strength; self-discipline, fortitude, etc. reputation.

If you will look at these definitions you can see that ethics relates to standards of conduct. Period. Ethics are...no good or bad comes into mix. Integrity either is or isn't. Sound moral principle is relative to observer or end user.

It stands to reason, therefore, that best measure of good or bad practice falls to basic "character".

Play along with me for a minute.

Let's just say that you stumbled across a message hidden in a book in attic of your grandmother's house that tells you about a treasure chest filled with gold and precious gems valued at over $1,000,000.

Now, message tells you that this treasure is buried under a rock, three yards north of an apple tree, in an orchard, behind an old gray barn, a half mile west of a big white house, on a dirt road, five miles east of Anytown in Anystate in Anycountry.

You have never been to Anycountry. You have never been to Anystate. You have no idea where Anytown is, let alone finding a big white house, a barn, an orchard etc. But you know that Grandma never lied, right? So it's really out there.