Steve Priest (steve@integrityII.com) is President of Integrity Insight International.

My friend Phil Rudolph retired last month from his position as chief legal officer at Jack in the Box. Each year he wrote a witty and relevant holiday letter to the employees, advising good behavior. He closed his last letter with a message that I found fantastic and trust you will, too. Here it is, with Phil’s permission:

“Ethics is important. More-so now than ever. It seems increasingly these days that ethics, morality, and integrity are no longer thought of as virtues, but are instead dismissed as weaknesses. And in a ‘transactional’ rather than ‘relational’ world, perhaps that’s the case. But I refuse to believe that humanity will continue to move down this transactional path in which doing the right thing is scorned, mocked, or demeaned.