Many people I’ve known and respected over the years have developed, over time, a personal code of their own. What’s yours?

I keep hearing communication colleagues pining for set of rules for social media like those in legacy journalism i.e. critical thinking skills, validated sources of information and quotes, insertion of editorial judgment steps, off the record conventions and ethical principles.

The notion that a PR person could effectively and credibly be an organization’s conscience has been troubling. The vast majority of us have little, if any, impact or contact with top management, where unfortunate, unnecessary, and unethical behaviors are initiated, allowed, ignored, encouraged, or forgiven.

Leave it to the Wall Street Journal (Business Education, 2-6-13) to come up with the headline “Does an “A” in Ethics Have Any Value?”

The PR profession suffers from schizophrenia. On the one hand, PR people want to be at the table making decisions and guiding strategy with the boss in good times and bad. On the other hand, many want to serve as the guiding conscience of their organizations.

For some time now, I’ve been conducting my own completely unscientific “poll” of senior advisors, asking them, from their experience, to provide up to 10 attributes of executives with integrity. Here’s what they said…