Looking Outside Companies are unethical all the time - business ethics professor Guido Palazzo
Feb 26, 2026
Guido Palazzo, professor of business ethics at HEC Lausanne and author of The Dark Pattern, explains how ordinary people slide into corporate wrongdoing. He discusses Wells Fargo quotas, Theranos-style “fake it” cultures, ethical blindness and why HR often protects high performers. He argues respectful workplaces outperform harsh, metrics-driven ones and offers practical ways to preserve personal values.
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Why Ordinary Employees Commit Extraordinary Wrongs
- Ethical failures often involve not just bad leaders but thousands of ‘normal’ middle managers who become ethically blind due to contextual pressures.
- Guido Palazzo explains Wells Fargo: top targets and pressure turned 100,000 salespeople into perpetrators without necessarily blaming only the CEO.
Wells Fargo Salesroom Became a Climate of Fear
- Sales quotas at Wells Fargo created extreme fear and physical distress, with employees reporting stomach pain and comparisons to combat trauma.
- Guido Palazzo cites quotes like Sunday evening stomach pain and a veteran saying salesroom was worse than Iraq.
Ethical Blindness Explains Systemic Scandals
- Ethical blindness describes how normal people lose moral perception step by step inside organizations, enabling systemic scandals.
- Palazzo and coauthor found repeating leadership and cultural patterns that predict when organizations will fall over the moral cliff.