- You have a very strong ethical compass and so it's kind of a two-part question, which is: Where does that come from, how is it that you've found your ethical compass and have such strong convictions and the other thing is I'd like you to tell us what ethical leadership really means to you?
- Well I think the, sort of the compass comes from parents, and parents and who you surround yourselves with, friends, and it's sort of that collective group of people that influence you the most and so I would say that's largely the fact of others and others that have influenced me over the years.
In terms of ethics I think when most people or many people in business think of ethics they think of accounting fraud, and they think of insider trading, and you know, this and that sort of the group of companies that did some bad things with the Enrons, the World Coms, this kind of thing.
But this is not what I think of because I think largely those are very extreme, small percentage of businesses.
So when I think of ethics I think of leaving things better than you found them.
And to me that goes from everything from environmentally, to how you work with suppliers with labor questions, to your carbon footprint of your products, to the things you choose to support, to the way you treat your employees, Your whole persona, to me, fits under that umbrella.
And the simple way to think about it to me is leaving things better than you found them.
And that is what we try to do at Apple in a very simple way and it's what the way I try to lead my life.
