BBB Center for Character Ethics

2.22.2012 5 ways to tell if someone is trustworthy

2.22.2012 Cloud technology helps small businesses stay competitive

2.22.2012 5 productivity-boosting apps for business users

Our Story

The Better Business Bureau has worked vigorously for nearly 100 years promoting high standards of business ethics. Yet, in the minds of many consumers, we were solely in the business of handling customer complaints.

We knew that we needed to demonstrate and shine a brighter spotlight on our commitment to high ethical standards. So, we launched the Torch Awards program to recognize businesses that were intentionally pursuing the highest standards of organizational ethics – putting high character into action. Over the years, a commonality among our Torch Award recipients became clear – each valued leadership character ethics and ethical enterprising as vital traits in their organizations.

Armed with this information, we set out to create a better roadmap to more intentionally transfer the essential disciplines of personal and public integrity. This resulted in our adoption of the 20 defined leadership character ethics in the UncommonSense™ Framework, and the six TRUST! principles in the EthicalEnterprises™ Framework. These frameworks have become the roadmap, the inspiration and the foundation for the BBB Center for Character Ethics.

Today, the BBB Center for Character Ethics (a 501c3 non-profit educational corporation) is a powerful working collaboration of experts and organizations dedicated to providing practical character ethics and ethical enterprising training for leaders serving in our Current Workforce and educators serving our future workforce. Our objective is to help every BBB service center have a clear strategy for advancing positive ethics (not just corrective negative intervention) and strengthening the BBB movement by giving individuals the confidence to intentionally commit to leadership ethics and ethical enterprising.

Why Character Ethics? Educators relate comfortably to the term 'character', while businesses, government and higher education relate to the term 'ethics'. They are two sides of the same coin. Because we serve both sectors, the term "Character Ethics" aspires to bridge the gap and unites these words to express "universal ethics that uniquely build high Character."