Beyond the Bottom Line: Why Trust is the Real Metric in Business Ethics

A few years back, after losing a huge pitch at an ad agency, my boss rewarded me—not for the loss, but for taking bold initiative during the process. That unexpected gesture stuck with me. In business, we're conditioned to measure success in sales, productivity, and profit. But are we missing something subtler? I want to dig into the double-edged sword of numbers: necessary but dangerously lopsided if they're all we see. There's a more elusive metric at work—trust—and the consequences of ignoring it are bigger than most realize.

The Strange Math of Ethical Fading: When Numbers Blind Us

In business, numbers are king. Sales, revenue, and profit are easy to measure, and they offer a clear snapshot of performance. But what about trust? What about values? These are much harder to quantify, and as a result, they often get left out of the equation. This imbalance—where the measurable overshadows the meaningful—creates the perfect environment for a phenomenon called ethical fading.

When the Bottom Line Becomes Blinding

I’ve seen firsthand how organizations become obsessed with short-term financial results. The logic is simple: what gets measured gets managed. So, we measure sales, profit margins, and quarterly growth. But when we focus only on these metrics, we risk losing sight of the bigger picture. The more ethereal elements—like trust, integrity, and values—are pushed aside because they’re difficult to track. This is where ethical fading begins.

What Is Ethical Fading?

Ethical fading is a subtle process. It happens when the pressure to achieve measurable results—especially short-term financial targets—clouds our judgment. We stop seeing our decisions as ethical choices and start viewing them as business necessities. Over time, actions that once seemed clearly wrong become rationalized as “just part of the job.”

The danger is that ethical fading rarely starts with outright fraud or scandal. Instead, it begins with small, seemingly harmless decisions. Maybe it’s rounding up a sales figure to hit a target, or overlooking a questionable practice because “everyone else is doing it.” These small compromises, when rewarded or ignored, can quickly escalate.

Short-Term Financial Focus: A Breeding Ground for Unethical Behavior

Poorly designed incentives and relentless short-term focus are breeding grounds for ethical fading. When organizations tie rewards, promotions, or even job security to hitting aggressive sales goals, employees feel pressured to deliver results at any cost. The culture shifts from “doing the right thing” to “doing what it takes.”

A striking example is the Wells Fargo scandal. Employees, under intense pressure to meet unrealistic sales quotas, opened millions of unauthorized accounts. The company’s incentive structure didn’t just encourage this behavior—it demanded it. As one observer put it,

“There's nothing illegal about it...but it's highly unethical.”

Examples of Ethical Fading in Action

• Wells Fargo’s Fake Accounts: Employees created fake bank accounts to meet sales goals. The focus on numbers blinded management to the ethical cost, and the problem grew until it became a national scandal.
• Drug Price Hikes: In some cases, companies have raised drug prices by 100%, 200%, or even 500%. These decisions are often justified by financial targets, but they can have devastating consequences for patients. Again, the math makes sense on paper, but the ethics are ignored.
• Rationalized Violations: Small rule-bending—like misreporting sales or ignoring compliance checks—often starts as a way to “make the numbers work.” Over time, these rationalizations become routine, and the ethical line moves further away.

Why Trust and Values Matter More Than Numbers

When organizations measure only what is easy—sales, profit, growth—they risk drifting into unethical behavior. The consequences of ethical fading are severe: damaged reputations, legal penalties, and loss of public trust. But the most insidious effect is cultural. When employees see that only numbers matter, they learn to ignore their own moral compass.

Business ethics isn’t just about avoiding scandals; it’s about building a culture where trust and values are as important as the bottom line. If we want to prevent ethical fading, we must find ways to measure—and reward—the things that truly matter, even if they’re hard to quantify.

Trust, SEAL Teams, and the Leadership Everyone Overlooks

In the world of elite performance, few organizations are as respected as SEAL Team Six. Their reputation for excellence is legendary, but what truly sets them apart isn’t just their skills in the field—it’s their unwavering commitment to trust within their teams. This approach to leadership and trust offers a powerful lesson for businesses everywhere, especially when it comes to trust in teams and the leadership qualities in teams that are too often ignored.

How SEAL Team Six Measures What Matters

During a rare opportunity to sit down with the head of training for SEAL Team Six, I asked a simple question: “How do you choose who gets on this team?” After all, every SEAL is already exceptional. The answer was both surprising and revealing. He drew an X-Y axis. On the vertical axis, he wrote “performance”—how good you are in the field, your skills, your results. On the horizontal axis, he wrote “trust”—what kind of person you are, how you treat others, and whether you can be relied on beyond the mission.

He explained, “I may trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my money or my wife?” This distinction is crucial. In the SEALs, trustworthiness measurement in teams is not just about competence under fire, but about character and reliability in every aspect of life.

The Toxicity of High Performers with Low Trust

The SEALs’ matrix quickly reveals something most organizations overlook. Everyone wants the high performer with high trust—these are the rare stars. No one wants the low performer with low trust. But the real danger, the head of training emphasized, is the high performer with low trust. These individuals may deliver results, but they erode the team from within. They are considered toxic, undermining morale, cohesion, and ultimately, the mission.

What’s remarkable is that SEAL Team Six would rather have a medium performer with high trust—or even a low performer with high trust—than a high performer who can’t be trusted. This is a profound insight for organizational behavior. In business, we often do the opposite: we promote solo stars based on their numbers, regardless of how they treat their colleagues or the culture they create.

Why Business Fails to Measure Trust

Most companies have a million ways to measure performance—sales targets, project completions, efficiency metrics. But when it comes to trust, we have almost no formal measurements. This gap allows toxic high performers to rise through the ranks, eventually becoming toxic leaders. The irony is that it’s not hard to spot these individuals. Ask any team who the most toxic member is, and everyone will point to the same person. Likewise, ask who always has your back when things get tough, and the answer is just as clear.

“I may trust you with my life, but do I trust you with my money or my wife?”

The Overlooked Leaders: Trust as the Real Value Add

The most gifted natural leaders in any team are not always the top individual performers. Instead, they are the ones who consistently lift the performance of those around them, foster collaboration, and reduce toxicity. Their value is often intangible, but it is immense. In trust-based environments, ethical behavior becomes the norm, and innovation flourishes because people feel safe to take risks and support each other.

Research consistently shows that trustworthy leaders outperform raw star performers when it comes to long-term organizational health. These leaders create sustainable business practices and a healthy workplace culture. They are the glue that holds teams together, ensuring that the sum is far greater than the parts.

• SEAL Team Six values trust as highly as field skills—high performer/low trust types are considered toxic.
• Business rarely measures trust—organizations promote solo stars regardless of teammate trustworthiness.
• Natural leaders lift their teams’ performance, even if their own numbers aren’t stellar.

The lesson is clear: if the highest-performing teams on the planet choose trust over raw performance, it’s time for business leaders to rethink what they measure, reward, and promote. Trust in teams isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s the foundation of sustainable success.

Rewarding Behaviors, Not Just Results: A Case for Values-Driven Incentives

In the world of business, it’s easy to fall into the trap of rewarding only outcomes. After all, results are tangible, measurable, and often tied directly to the bottom line. But if we look beyond the numbers, we see that an exclusive focus on outcomes can undermine the very qualities that build sustainable success—trust, ethical decision making, and a resilient organizational culture. My own early career experience at a major ad agency taught me a lesson I’ve carried ever since: rewarding behaviors over outcomes is not just a nice idea—it’s a powerful driver of long-term growth and trust.

Let me share a real-life example. Early in my career, I worked at a large advertising agency. When a big new business pitch came up, it was always the senior executives who took the stage, while junior staff like me were relegated to support roles. One December, with a major pitch scheduled for January, all the senior executives went on holiday, leaving me and another junior colleague behind. Our task was simple: prep the “war room” for the execs’ return, which mostly meant hanging research on the walls—a job that would take an hour at most.

Instead of coasting through the week, we saw an opportunity. We dove deep into the research, uncovered a key insight, and built an entire strategy and pitch deck ourselves. When the executives returned, we presented our work. They loved it and used our pitch for the client presentation. But here’s the twist: we didn’t win the business. Despite the loss, my boss gave me a huge promotion—two levels up. As he explained,

“He wasn’t rewarding my outcome; he was rewarding my behavior.”

This experience shaped my understanding of organizational behavior incentives. Too often, companies conflate results with ethically sound behavior, creating a culture where only outcomes matter. This can lead to short-term thinking, risk aversion, and even unethical practices, as employees chase results at any cost. But when we start measuring intangible qualities—like initiative, collaboration, and integrity—we send a different message. We tell our teams that how they achieve results matters just as much as the results themselves.

Research and experience both confirm a simple truth: you get the behavior you reward. If you want more ethical decision making, reward ethical choices—even when they don’t immediately pay off. If you want innovation, recognize those who take bold steps, even if they stumble. If you want trust, reward transparency and honesty, not just closed deals or quarterly gains. This approach to balancing performance and values is not just about being “nice”—it’s about building a culture that can weather setbacks, adapt to change, and earn the trust of employees, customers, and partners.

The subtle shift from outcome-based to values-driven incentives doesn’t mean ignoring results. Rather, it means acknowledging that results are often the product of many small, courageous, and sometimes unsuccessful efforts. By rewarding behaviors, we encourage learning, resilience, and a willingness to try new things. These are the qualities that drive sustainable business growth and foster a culture of trust.

In my agency story, the reward for initiative led to more initiative—not just from me, but from others who saw what was valued. Over time, this shaped a culture where people were willing to step up, take risks, and support each other. The lesson is clear: if you want integrity, reward integrity. The rest will follow, eventually.

As we look beyond the bottom line, let’s remember that trust is the real metric in business ethics. By measuring and rewarding values-based actions, we build organizations that are not only successful, but also resilient, ethical, and worthy of trust. The future belongs to companies that understand: rewarding behaviors, not just results, is the foundation of true, sustainable success.