58. Integrity is not like pregnancy
Integrity is sometimes compared with pregnancy: SPs either have it or they do not.The disadvantage of this metaphor is that the smallest infringement of integrity means it is seen as completely absent. As a consequence, people are both reticent and at the same time eager to criticize the integrity of SPs. However, integrity is not a dichotomy but a continuum. For this reason SPs should be restrained in talking of people’s integrity in absolute terms.
A minister once compared integrity with pregnancy: people either have it or they lack it. You cannot be a person of partial integrity any more than you can be partially pregnant. By the same theory, in her view the government either does or does not possess integrity.348 The strength of this metaphor is that it focuses on the importance of integrity. Integrity is absolute. People who fall short are found completely lacking. No tolerance, margin, or compromise is possible with respect to integrity.
The serious disadvantage of this metaphor, however, is that it presents integrity as a dichotomy. It is one or the other, black or white, suggesting that the slightest infringement wipes it out altogether, equating a single scratch with a total loss. This makes questioning someone’s integrity highly charged and threatening. After all, if evidence is found of a lack of integrity, there is no integrity any more. This view can easily lead to reserve and cautiousness in criticizing a person’s integrity in practice and to fierce defense when people are criticized: after all, it casts doubt on everything about their integrity.
However, integrity is not a dichotomy but a continuum, running from extreme corruption through corruption and lack of integrity to integrity and extreme integrity. People may possess a great deal of integrity or very little, or they may be in between. Integrity is not absolute in the sense of being about SPs’ entire lives or behavior. Integrity is relative, because it is attached to the relevant situations, jobs, roles, and positions, although, as indicated in chapter 12, it can be transferable. An SP may have integrity as a colleague but less so as a chairperson, or may do well as a party leader but show insufficient integrity as a negotiator.
Since integrity is a continuum, and attached to the situation and office, we should be cautious in making negative generalizations about a person’s integrity. Italian president Silvio Berlusconi called Giorgio Napolitano untrustworthy.349 Such accusations raise various questions: are you doing the person justice, what gives you the right to describe someone in this way, and are you trustworthy yourself? Above all, it raises the question of whether this is an absolute issue. Labeling someone untrustworthy means they are not trustworthy in any respect, not in different situations, nor in different jobs. Descriptions of a person’s integrity can be softened by avoiding speaking of the person as a whole, and focusing instead on their capacity as an SP (speaking of someone as an official, rather than an individual person). Instead of speaking of the presence of bad, speak of the absence of good (not trustworthy, rather than untrustworthy), instead of virtue, speak of behavior (for instance not being faithful in keeping promises) and instead of behavior in a general sense, speaking of behavior in a specific situation (for instance, someone may not be faithful when pressure is high or during negotiations). It makes a substantial difference calling someone corrupt compared with stating that in their position as chairperson, under time pressure, they unduly push their own opinions.
The same cautiousness should be observed when it comes to labeling SPs as possessing integrity in absolute terms. For example, a prime minister was called “a person of integrity through and through” by a minister.350 Since integrity is an ideal and in a certain sense, as we saw previously, no one has complete integrity, it is risky to label someone this way. This is not only potentially naïve, but suggests that the person making the claim knows the other through and through. Since integrity has many sides, this is a bold assumption. After all, we do not know what knowledge we are missing. Such pronouncements are also risky because they imply that things that do not completely conform to integrity in a person have been judged as integrity. This runs the risk of others with a lower opinion (for instance because they know more) thinking that those who label such as person as having integrity must have less strict criteria. By labeling another person as having integrity, you run the risk of appearing to have less integrity yourself.