The task of business ethics, then, is to identify the duties that business people have as business people. What are these duties? One can begin with the most basic ones: the duty to obey the law and the “rules of the game,” which provide for “open and free competition without deception or fraud.” Yet even these basic obligations are disputed.
Business is like a poker game. There are rules, but within the rules it is permissible to bluff in order to mislead others. In fact one must do so or lose the game. The ethical rules of everyday life therefore do not apply to business. As long as they comply with the letter of the law, they are within their rights to operate their businesses as they see fit. If an executive allows himself to be torn between a decision based on business considerations and one based on his private ethical code, he exposes himself to a grave psychological strain. Bluffing is expected in many business contexts, no less than in poker. No one expects negotiators to put all their cards on the table, or advertisers to tell the whole truth about their product. What the poker analogy actually tells us, however, is that “deception” is not really deception when everyone expects it as part of the game. Nobody is deceived when advertisers say their product is the best on the market; everyone says that. Hiding a card up one’s sleeve, on the other hand, is truly deception because it breaks the rules of poker and no one is expecting it. This sort of behavior, called as “malicious deception,” is wrong.