15. Integrity is about appearance, not just the facts
SPs should avoid giving the impression that they lack integrity, because this damages trust, which is difficult to restore. SPs should therefore (1) avoid seeking out situations that could easily create the appearance of a lack of integrity, (2) take organizational measures that avoid the appearance of a lack of integrity, and (3) avoid an atmosphere of mistrust that could make them vulnerable to suspicions.
The Canadian government’s “Values and Ethics Code for the Public Service” talks about avoiding not only behavior lacking integrity but also the impression of such behavior. For instance it states, “Avoiding and preventing situations that could give rise to a conflict of interest, or the appearance of a conflict of interest, is one of the primary means by which a public servant maintains public confidence in the impartiality and objectivity of the Public Service.”82 Many other codes of integrity also address this subject with the general aim that the target group should avoid giving the impression of a lack of integrity. After all, integrity is not just a matter of fact, but also of perceived facts and fiction, the way the facts are understood, a matter of appearance as well as substance.
There was uproar when a queen spoke out against the threatened closure of a military airport. The airport was near the palace where she lived and worked, so the royal family made extensive use of it for their own travel as well as for receiving guests. The queen created the impression that she was allowing her personal interests to dominate, whereas she argued that members of the government and other dignitaries made use of the airport, and that it was advantageous that it was small, well organized, and secure.83 There was also a commotion when it emerged that a governor had sold a villa belonging to the state to a good friend for
€1, a mayor had awarded a license to a charity that he chaired, a municipal authority used a cab company owned by the mayor’s son, and a council member’s company had received a contract to print the ballot papers for the next elections.
The problem with these “apparent situations” is that no actual violation of integrity need take place. The accused may not have been involved in decision making at all, as in the case of the mayor, who left the decision about the taxi firm entirely to the purchasing department. This can even benefit decision making. People do not take on contractors with whom they have bad private experience when hiring in their public capacity as SPs, because they want to avoid new problems, and they promote those with whom they have friendly relationships because they can trust them to do a good job. People may even do good things they would not otherwise have done, as in the case of the mayor who decided to build his own vacation home in a partner municipality to show support.
Why are such situations so problematic? SPs with integrity are those who serve the interests they should serve in office. A president serves the interests of the country, a governor those of the state, and a mayor those of the municipality. For this purpose SPs should not only comply with the rules, they should also serve as purely as possible. Those for whom SPs work must be able to trust that SPs use their power with integrity rather than abusing it, and there lies the problem. If the different interests cannot be cleanly separated, but run together and become intertwined, this can raise the question of which interests are really served. The purity of decision making can be called into question, because people raise the suspicion that they are misusing their positions for other interests.
A mayor who advised the renovation committee against selecting a particular contractor created the impression of lack of integrity because others interpreted it as use of her power to take revenge for the contractor’s failure on a private job. This suspicion was reinforced when it emerged that the mayor had not fully settled her account with the contractor because of an ongoing dispute. Even if the mayor acted with the best of intentions, her actions gave the impression that she was making improper use of her power due to a conflict of interests.
The criteria for avoiding the appearance of abuse of power and dishonest behavior are problematic, though, since the appearance is fed by mistrust on the part of other people. Suspicious types will always be able to find signs of abuse of power, because there are always multiple interests involved – even in the simplest cases SPs will always be private individuals as well as officials – and because the SP always has power and therefore the opportunity to abuse it. If there is a question of mistrust, the SPs involved can hardly appeal
to people for general trust in SPs, as that trust is absent precisely because they themselves have become objects of mistrust. It is also di