By Murray Evans

Lexington, Ky. - As a bank vice president and senior loan officer in Winchester, Wes Terry wants to be able to look customers and employees in the eye with confidence and maintain a positive legacy for the business.

Terry isn't alone in his wish to make sure his company doesn't join the list of businesses like Enron and Adelphia that recently have been in the spotlight because of corporate scandals. He joined about 60 other people from four states at a Lexington hotel Wednesday in attending a business ethics seminar - called the Ethical Leadership Institute - hosted by Georgetown College and the Winchester-based Peer Exchange Network.

"We understand that our corporate citizenship in our community is important," said Terry, who works for Winchester Bank. "We're very concerned about our image in the community. Customer service and confidentiality are more than buzzwords, or they should be.

"This is very well-timed and appropriate. It's got to start someplace. I'm sure there are probably other conferences across the country similar to this one. I think it's a grass-roots, growing movement to put ethics back in business."

Georgetown College President Bill Crouch said the Peer Exchange Network, which he helped start, began in 1995. The group's goal is to identify and share ethical business practices among its members.

Every other month for the last year, executives of the Minnetonka, Minn.-based communications company Norstan have traveled to Lexington to talk about business ethics to members of the Peer Exchange Network. Crouch said the company has an excellent reputation for ethics. The seminar Wednesday was a chance to expand on that theme, Crouch said.

"While the headlines are going to all the guys who are doing it wrong, there is a very strong corps of people who are really committed to doing it right," Crouch said. "Part of doing it right is you're not doing it to get headlines. You're doing it to really make a difference in the lives of people."

Attendees representing six colleges and two dozen businesses, large and small, came from Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee and Minnesota.

"We're trying to understand concepts to implement into a workplace climate and understand what other companies are doing to incorporate ethical behavior in their organizations," said Marla Sanders, the director of ethics at Louisville-based Humana Inc., a health insurance company with about 14,000 employees. "With the giant penalties and fines, it's not (just) the appropriate thing to do or the right thing to do. It's now the expectation."

The speakers included Marjorie Kelly, the publisher and editor of Business Ethics magazine, and Ron James, the president of the Minneapolis-based Center for Ethical Business Cultures, a nonprofit organization that assists business leaders in creating business cultures that are both ethical and profitable.

Kelly said that pressures to make money sometimes cause executives to cut ethical corners.

"You can have a company that's trying to be ethical, but the mandate to make a quarterly return can sometimes drive out ethics," Kelly said.

Ethical considerations should be a part of every company's design, she said.

James said that because of recent high-profile corporate scandals, "in effect, we have corporate character on trial." He gave two reasons for the scandals: an organizational breakdown in governance and a culture of greed allowed to run rampant in those companies.

He praised organizations "that work at making sure their culture understands right from wrong, and in gray areas, reaches for higher standards" and said that benefits of a strong ethical corporate culture include increased revenue and net income.

Crouch said the seminar is a sort of outreach for his 1,660-student college, which is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention.

"I think this is the college's mission," Crouch said. "What we're focusing on is right and wrong."