The Defense Department Is Not Training Military Personnel to Be Ethical

The Defense Department has not established appropriate training or measurements to ensure military personnel are acting in an ethical and professional manner, a new audit has found.

The Pentagon has taken some preliminary steps to hold its employees to higher ethical standards, the Government Accountability Office said in its report, but it has failed to fully implement new programs and military personnel still face little oversight on those issues. The department has still not developed a values-based ethics program that was recommended in 2008 and would “foster an ethical culture and achieve high standards of conduct,” GAO said. 

In 2013, the department instituted ethics training to “select military and civilian personnel,” but in 2014, just 5 percent of Defense’s total workforce had received annual ethics training. Federal guidelines, a 2012 department study and a 2008 Panel on Contracting Integrity have independently recommended Defense regularly train all of its employees on ethics standards.

The contracting panel made 13 other recommendations, on which Defense officials told GAO they have no plans to take further action.

Last year, the Pentagon established an office to coordinate its professionalism initiatives, headed by a senior adviser for management professionalism (SAMP). However, the position was created with a two-year term, meaning it will expire next year unless the department opts to renew it. Defense has created no “timelines or performance measures to assess SAMP’s progress and to inform its decision on whether the SAMP position should be retained,” GAO found.

Essentially, the office has no benchmarks, and the Defense Department does not know if it is accomplishing its major tasks.

The Pentagon has created two tools -- “command climate” and “360-degree assessments” -- to determine how well ethics and professionalism issues are being addressed at the individual and component level. Defense offices have failed to fully implement these initiatives, however, with certain components skirting around congressionally mandated assessment structures.

Individual military services have complied with department and congressionally ordered ethics assessments to varying degrees, but none have implemented all of the requirements. Some of the branches told GAO they have no plans to expand their efforts.

The auditors said the department’s failures are evidenced by recent misconduct by military personnel.

“As recent cases of misconduct demonstrate, ethical and professional lapses can carry significant operational consequences, waste taxpayer resources, and erode public confidence,” GAO wrote.

GAO recommended the Defense Department expand its ethics training and assessments, and create meaningful gauges so it can measure progress and the impact new programs are having. The Pentagon at least partially concurred with nearly all of GAO’s suggestions.