Ethical knowhow is essential for today's leaders. Watching the news over the past few months has underlined the importance of being ethical in business. So what can you do to ensure that you are a principled leader and how do you create an ethical organisation? Try following these 10 tips:

1. Understand your own values. You have to be clear about your values in order to make sure you live through them at work as well as in the home.

2. Actions not just words. People take the lead from what you do, not simply what you say.

3. Communicate honestly. Avoid using spin to get your message across.

4. Increase your ethical knowhow. Go on a course or read a book on how to make decisions ethically.

5. Find a mentor. Ethical issues can be difficult to identify in the first place and require skill and courage to handle. An experienced mentor can help when there may be no one else to hear your views.

6. Train your employees. Make sure everyone understands how to handle ethical issues.

7. Ask people to challenge wrongdoing. Show that you expect people will speak up; otherwise they may be afraid to do it. Reward them if necessary.

8. Include ethical behaviour in appraisals. This sends out a strong message.

9. Hire for values as well as capabilities. It is almost impossible to change someone's values. So recruit the right people in the first place.

10. Insist on the right people. Fire those employees who fall short of your ethical standards.

Sally Bibb is an organisational consultant and author of The Right Thing: An everyday guide to ethics in business (Wiley, £14.99)
www.sallybibb.com