" All of those excuses are rationalizations that people use to try to convince themselves (and others) that they have not violated ethical rules when they have. Contemporary society is full of examples of unethical behavior on may levels, although there are also examples of improvements in many professional industries since the field of ethics has become more prominent. The history of commercial business and industry proves that people will try to do almost anything they can get away with to make a profit. In fact, laws develop for exactly this reason: to address practices that have already been tried. The recent headlines involving the Bernard Madoff scandal and others like Enron demonstrate that ethical values are always capable of being violated even at the highest levels of modern business. In response to corporate scandals and other types of serious ethical violations, lawmakers and industry regulators have continually improved laws and regulations to enforce criminal penalties to deter unethical conduct. Sometimes, these measures are very effective, but generally, only because they create fear of consequences, not because they are necessarily effective at changing the tendency of people to violate ethical rules and values. Without penalties that make unethical behavior risky for those inclined to exploit other people, unethical...

Furthermore, laws only address certain types of unethical behavior; there are many areas of extremely unethical behavior that are not covered by any formal laws, such as conduct in personal relationships.
Conclusion:

Ethical behavior is that which is not unfair, dishonest, deceitful, or harmful to others. Generally, we receive our ethical training only informally from our families and cultural institutions, but those values vary tremendously from culture to culture. In fact, behaviors considered perfectly ethical in some societies are considered the exact opposite in others, and vice-versa. Even where ethical values are taught, it is human nature to follow our impulses and to simply rationalize excuses to justify violating any ethical standards of our society. Typical examples include justifying lying, stealing, and breaking rules even though those excuses are not valid. In modern society, every facet of business and commerce must be regulated by laws that impose sufficient criminal penalties to deter unethical behavior. Frequently, even criminal penalties are insufficient to guarantee ethical behavior and several recent high profile incidents in the world of corporate finance and investment demonstrate that very convincingly.