23. Integrity issues are not limited to personal enrichment or unfair advantage
Although personal enrichment clearly indicates a serious lack of integrity, it is not the only indication possible.The same applies to the use of unfair advantage. Neither are necessary conditions for declaring a person lacking in integrity. Even people disadvantaged by their own behavior or acting on good intentions may lack integrity. Behavior may even be deemed to have fallen short if an SP creates a situation involving unacceptable risks to integrity. SPs should therefore avoid placing a limited interpretation on integrity.
When SPs are accused of breaches of integrity, they often defend themselves by saying that there is no question of personal enrichment. For example, a mayor accused of fraud claimed that he had not gained any financial advantage. His political associates leapt to his defense with the same argument. People hope such retorts will take the sting out of the accusations. It may be a mitigating factor, but it does not make the SPs involved innocent. For various reasons personal enrichment is not a necessary condition of a breach of integrity.
Firstly enrichment is an extreme term in the sense that a person is only significantly richer if the sums involved are substantial. We probably would not consider someone who accepts a gift of $100 to be significantly richer. If we equate lack of integrity with enrichment, we run the risk of limiting the domain of integrity to large-scale transgressions, seeing the rest as irrelevant tinkering around the edges, making everything is permissible as long as there is no question of personal enrichment. This gives SPs who are already rich greater latitude, because it takes more money to make them significantly richer than an SP who has little or nothing.
In order to avoid this, lack of integrity is also defined as behavior that confers an advantage. The benefit of this definition is that every advantage is an advantage, regardless of magnitude, or whether the recipient possesses a lot or a little of it. Another point in favor of this definition is that it is not only a matter of financial advantage, as implied by enrichment, but also of non- financial advantage, such as status, enjoyment, and convenience.
Nevertheless, this does not necessarily mean that lack of integrity always involves personal advantage. A Dutch Prince attempted to counter accusations of bribery by claiming that the money received was intended for a good cause, a non-governmental conservation organization. The investigatory committee, however, did not see this as a justification.118 Other SPs attempted in vain to combat accusations by claiming that the money they received benefitted their parties, as in the case of German minister Frans-Jozef Strauß.119 However, it is not only a matter of personal advantage but also of conferring an advantage on others who have no right to it.
But we are not quite there yet. Even without advantage, behavior may still lack integrity. In fact, even if people put themselves at a disadvantage, they may lack integrity, for instance if they use confidential information to invest privately in shares. Even if the market then falls, contrary to predictions, and they suffer a loss, that makes no difference to the judgment of the integrity of the action. Confidential information has been misused.
Integrity goes further still. Even in the absence of any question of abuse, behavior lacking in integrity may have taken place. The appearance of abuse or even potential for abuse may have arisen. SPs who own shares of companies that may be influenced by their policies create the impression of potential abuse. The same applies if their immediate family members own shares in these companies, as SPs and their family members have an interest in using the information from their positions for private aims. This can even happen unconsciously and unintentionally. The SP might mention a policy detail (even over the telephone to others) that gives bystanders in the house an idea. On the ot