Ethics in the Era of COVID-19, with Rob Chesnut, Chief Ethics Officer, Airbnb

Rob Chesnut is the author of Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution.

As you continue your social isolation journey, what decisions will you make today? Some of us have serious decisions about how to provide for a family during an economic downturn. Others of us are trying to figure out how long we can go between showers. But for most of us, our decisions are not going to impact the lives of 150 million people. That’s the situation that Rob Chesnut found himself in earlier this year.

Rob Chesnut is the Chief Ethics Officer at Airbnb.

As a member of the Airbnb executive team, he and the team were faced with a decision that involved multiple stakeholders:

• 150 million Airbnb customers.
• 650,000 Airbnb hosts in 161 countries.
• More than 100,000 local communities.
• More than 7,500 employees in 34 cities worldwide.
• Investors.

How can you possibly make a decision that impacts that many people? The Airbnb leadership team knew that they would have to make tough choices and tradeoffs. They didn’t have a playbook for how to handle a global pandemic. Nobody did. What they did have was a set of core values to guide them. And they had a way of thinking about ethical decisions. Rob Chesnut calls this Intentional Integrity. 

Learn More About Rob Chesnut and Intentional Integrity:

Book: Intentional Integrity: How Smart Companies Can Lead an Ethical Revolution: https://amzn.to/2T3zNTv

Intentional Integrity website: https://www.intentionalintegrity.com

Rob Chesnut on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ChesnutRob

Rob Chesnut on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robchesnut