Clear lines, sound choices
Ethics, the Nolan principles and conflicts of interest.
Three hours on drawing clear ethical lines: the Nolan Principles, the standards landscape, reasoning through hard calls and handling interests, gifts and hospitality.
- Level
- Focus
- Learning time
- 3 hours
- Where
- Ethics, Integrity and Standards
- Price
- £69
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Read the full terms
Certificate of Completion, or Certificate of Completion and Assessment with a short assessment
Overview and Outcomes.
Who It's For
Leaders, officers and members making everyday ethical judgements
Overview
Public trust is lent, not owned, and it rests on everyday choices as much as formal rules. This programme sets out the seven Nolan Principles, the difference between ethics, integrity and standards, and the 2026 standards landscape in Wales and England. It offers practical ways of reasoning through hard calls, using utilitarian, deontological and virtue lenses with Northouse and Rest, and explores why good people do wrong things through Bandura, Janis and the Post Office Horizon scandal. It closes on codes, regulators and conflicts of interest, from the Porter v Magill test to the Greensill lobbying case.
Aims
The aim is to strengthen the ethical judgement of leaders, officers and members so they can draw clear lines and make sound choices: reasoning through hard calls, recognising the pressures that lead good people astray, and handling interests, gifts and complaints in ways that would stand up to public scrutiny.
In summary, you will be able to:
- Explain the seven Nolan Principles and the codes and regulators that oversee conduct in Wales and England, including how complaints are handled.
- Apply ethical lenses and Rest's four components to a hard decision, recognising blind spots, moral disengagement and groupthink as they arise.
- Manage actual, potential and perceived conflicts of interest using a five step discipline and the fair-minded and informed observer test.
What you'll develop
Through this Focus course, you will build the ability to:
- Explain each of the seven Nolan Principles and why the leadership principle asks more than personal good conduct.
- Distinguish ethics, integrity and standards, and use that distinction to identify which one failed when something goes wrong.
- Apply the utilitarian, deontological and virtue lenses to the same decision and identify the tensions they reveal.
- Identify blind spots and moral disengagement mechanisms, such as ethical fading and diffusion of responsibility, in workplace decisions.
- Distinguish a code of conduct, which sets minimum standards, from a behavioural framework, which describes what good looks like.
- Distinguish actual, potential and perceived conflicts of interest and apply the fair-minded and informed observer test.
Built from 2 parts.
3 hours of learning.
- 01Why good people go wrongEthical decision making for leadersBitesize3 modules
- 02Clear lines on interestsCodes of conduct, gifts and hospitalityBitesize2 modules
Keep going.
Part of the Ethics, Integrity and Standards topic, also sold whole as Integrity first.
Go deeper, and pay only the difference
- You are hereFocus, 3 hours, £69
- The whole topicExplore, Integrity first, 5 hours 30 minutes, £129. Already own the Focus? You pay £60.
When you step up to a higher level, what you paid in the last 12 months for lower-level courses inside the bigger course comes off its price, in proportion to how much of each is inside it, whichever topic it's from. Courses at the same or a lower level don't give credit against each other. A Focus course or above always costs at least £15. Prices per person. Read the full terms
Also part of: Governing with confidence, Serving your community well