1.4 BUSINESS ETHICS AND THE LAW
Some believe that the way out of this dilemma is to concentrate on legal compliance. For many business people, ethics is identified with the law Business heaves ethically when it obeys the law. An ethical business, therefore, should have an ethics officer or an ethics department that monitors compliance with the legal and professional standards of conduct.
Unfortunately, compliance with the law alone will prove insufficient for ethically responsible business. It is common to think of the law as a set of rules that one can obey or violate in an unambiguous way. Traffic laws, for example, require Stopping at a red light and prohibit speeds over a certain limit But this is a very incomplete understanding of the law. Even when there are specific regulations requiring or prohibiting certain action, ambiguity is always pos¬sible in the application of those regulations.