UVA Darden Professor Mary Gentile Named ‘Top Mind’ of 2017

By Dave Hendrick


Darden Professor Mary Gentile has added a new accolade to her list of awards and plaudits.

Gentile, author of the influential Giving Voice to Values curriculum, has been named one of Compliance Week‘s “Top Minds 2017,” a list that highlights “the best and brightest in the governance, risk, ethics and compliance profession.”

Deeming Gentile “The Practical Ethicist,” Compliance Week said Gentile is “one of the compliance and ethics field’s most renowned educators for her results-based ethics training.” She described the focus of Giving Voice to Values in a Q&A with the magazine:

Instead of presenting so-called ethical dilemmas, we should focus on situations where most of us would know what the right thing to do is but we just don’t think it’ll be successful, possible, feasible, or even well-received in the context where we’re working. So instead of asking people to determine what’s right, we ask, “how would you get the right thing done?”

I call this the Giving Voice to Values (GVV) thought experiment, because we know now that if you ask people what they would do, and they think it’s going to be impossible to do what they think is right, they will unconsciously rationalize why it’s not necessarily the wrong thing to do. People react emotionally and give reasons for it post-hoc. I wanted to disrupt that unconscious process before that pre-emptive rationalizing kicked in and just say, look, I’m not asking whether you would do this. I’m asking what if you wanted to do this, and then we get people to work together to script and action plan and rehearse so by the time they actually have to face the question, they feel like they have a real choice because they have some options.

Read the rest of the interview with Gentile in Compliance Week, beginning on page 32 (free sign-up required).

About the University of Virginia Darden School of Business

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

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