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Our episode guest is Mark McClennan, founder, CEO, and host of EthicalVoices and GM of C+C in Boston, a purpose-driven firm. He was also the 2016 PRSA National Chair.

Five things you’ll learn from this episode:

1.  Why ethical failures happen 
2. How to deal with ethical dilemmas 
3. How to have conversations with people making unethical decisions 
4. How to encourage ethical responsibility within your company 
5. Current ethical failures in the PR industry and their impact 

Quotables

• “Ethics is at the core of deceit, betrayal, drama – all of the great stories from the past 4,000 years usually tie back to ethical failures.” — @McClennan
• “Fundamentally it's only the authentic phrase that works the best.”— @McClennan
• “Follow the rules as you do for management, praise in public, and criticize in private.” — @McClennan
• “You need to do something, nothing, or something more.” — @McClennan
• “If somebody was doing something out of envy, you're going to need to use a very different argument with somebody who's using out of obedience to authority. You know it’s not just a one-size-fits-all message.” — @McClennan
• “Just like we do in crisis communications, you always want to give options. It’s not a binary solution.” — @McClennan

If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with others and leave us a review.

Guest’s contact info and resources:

• Mark McClennan on Twitter
• Mark McClennan on LinkedIn
• EthicalVoices

Additional Resources:

• PRSA Code of Ethics
• The Arthur Page Society ethics
• 6 steps to ethical decision making
• "Trial by Trolly" ethical game
• "Fake Famous” trailer
• EthicalVoices podcast
• How the PRSA Code of Ethics benefits communications employees
• 5 ethical rules your influencer marketing campaign cannot do without  
• Journalism ethics versus pub

Support the show

• On Top of PR is produced by Axia Public Relations, named by Forbes as one of America’s Best PR Agencies. Axia is an expert PR firm for national brands.
• On Top of PR is sponsored by ReviewMaxer, the platform for monitoring, improving, and promoting online customer reviews.