The Governance Institute of Australia has published its inaugural Ethics Index, which attempts to quantify the perception of the Australian adult population as to what they believe to be the actual level of ethical behaviour within Australian society.
Below is a summary of the key results, which shows that property-related fields (e.g mortgage brokers and real estate agents) are viewed as the least ethical segments of society:
Overall, Australians consider that Australian society is “Somewhat Ethical” (with an Ethics Index score of 39) while the Overall Importance of Ethics Index is scored at a much higher 74 (representing “Very Ethical”). This suggests that there is a shortfall in actual ethical performance (or a perception thereof) of some sectors that may be contributing to the ethical deficit. The Education, Health and Charity/Not-for-Profit sectors are perceived as “Very Ethical”, whilst the Financial and Corporate sectors are the lowest scoring and perceived as “Neither Ethical or Unethical” (each sector’s scores represent the net of the scores of the organisations and professions within them)…
The banking, finance and insurance sector has the lowest Ethics Index score amongst all sectors (-5), though the occupations within it are not necessarily rated as poorly… the lowest rated in the sector, Mortgage Brokers are seen as Ethical by 1 in 3…
Real Estate agents have the lowest Ethical score (23%) with 1 in 2 perceiving them to be Unethical…
The index is calculated by applying varied weightings to overall responses.
Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
