Ethics training works. The version they ask us to build does not.

Ethics training works. The version they ask us to build does not.

Leadership, Learning

A meta-analysis landed last week and my first reaction was: so what? Then, looking further, it does get interesting.

Ninety two randomised trials found that ethics and moral education works better when people talk to each other than when you push information at them. Pause for “so-what” reaction… Okay, we have known that for decades, e.g. 70/20/10.

Then I came back to it, and I think a lot of us are about to make the same mistake with it.

What the study actually found

Published in Nature Human Behaviour on 26 August, a team including researchers at the University of Queensland pooled the randomised evidence on interventions designed to shift ethical and moral outcomes.

  • 92 randomised controlled trials, 12,693 students, 381 effect sizes.
  • A pooled effect of g = 0.65 (effect size = “how big”) (95% CI [0.49, 0.81], p < 0.001). Geeky, I know, I will explain. Just know that this number is large by education standards.
  • The moderator is the interesting bit. Interventions with added student discussion were more effective than those “relying solely on unidirectional or passive information transfer”.
  • What moved was moral sensitivity, judgement and motivation. Character development was inconclusive.

Caveat – (before you put this in a business case) only one of the 92 studies was rated low risk of bias, and the population is students, not employees. Transfer to a workplace compliance audience is a reasonable inference, not a finding.

Here is what changed my mind.

First, this is not a 70/20/10 finding.

70/20/10 is a claim about where development comes from across a career: experience > then social > then formal. It has always been on soft evidential ground anyway, having come out of retrospective survey work with executives in the late 1980s rather than anything controlled.

This meta-analysis sits entirely inside the formal 10.

Discussion here is not the 20 beating the 10. It is a design feature within a structured intervention, and the finding is that the structured intervention works at g = 0.65 (effect size) when it includes discussion.

That says formal learning design is worth funding – yet the solo asynchronous module is the weak build of it.

Second, the number is the news, not the direction.

Most of us have believed this for years and could not price it. Believing something and being able to put a defensible figure next to it in a proposal are very different positions to negotiate from.

Third, belief has not changed practice.

Everybody in this industry “knows” discussion works. The industry still ships passive compliance modules by the million, every year, in every sector. I build them all the time. When a belief has been widely held for twenty years and has not changed what gets built, the constraint was never the belief. It was that nobody could justify the cost of the better build against a cheaper one that ticks the same box.

Evidence that reprices the alternative is useful precisely because of that.

If you hold the budget, two things follow:

  1. You are probably buying the weaker build of something that works. Compliance and ethics is the highest volume category in corporate learning, and it is almost always commissioned as the exact intervention this study says underperforms: a self paced module that transfers information, followed by a knowledge check. Not because anyone thinks it is best, but because it is procurable, auditable and cheap per head.
  2. Your reporting cannot see the thing that moved. The outcomes that improved were sensitivity and judgement. Completion rates and multiple choice scores do not measure that. If your compliance dashboard is green and your conduct incidents are not falling, that is not a mystery. You are measuring the wrong end of the intervention.

Learning Leaders – what to do about it:

WHATHOW
Pick one high stakes program.Most likely conduct, safety or ethics, and re-scope the next build. Same budget, different split: less production polish, more facilitated discussion, even if that means a 45 minute team conversation instead of a 20 minute module.
Add one judgement measure before you rebuild anything.Two ambiguous scenarios, “what would you do and why”, scored on the reasoning. You need the baseline more than you need the new module.
Change what you ask vendors for. If you ask for a module, you will get a module. Specify the outcome and the discussion mechanism, and see who can actually build it.
Push back on completion as a headline metric.Do it with your own executive. This study gives you the language to do it without sounding like you are avoiding accountability.

For instructional designer: If you build the thing.

  1. Design the e-learning as the stimulus. The module carries the case, the ambiguity, the consequence. The conversation carries the judgement work.
  2. Build for the facilitator as much as the learner. Discussion guides, debrief structures and observation rubrics are the products almost nobody makes well.
  3. Ask people to commit before revealing the answer – then display how peers responded and the reasoning behind the minority position. You preserve the cognitive tension that makes discussion effective, but at scale and without a facilitator.

The trap in all of this is concluding that discussion means facilitation = a person in a room billing hours. That is the expensive read, and it is the one that gets the idea rejected. The design problem worth solving is how to manufacture the conversation without needing to be in it.

If you are rebuilding a compliance or ethics program and want a second set of eyes, either on the design or on the business case you have to take upstairs, I am happy to help.

Reference

Basarkod, G., Cahill, L. S., Burston, A., Barnett, D., Mahoney, J., Griffith, S., Swaryandini, G., Bradshaw, E. L., Devine, E. K., Akhtaruzzaman, M., Dicke, T., Wilks, M., Slattery, P., Saeri, A. K., Grundy, E. A. C., Lonsdale, C., Marsh, H. W., Chambers, S. K., & Noetel, M. (2026). Educational interventions are effective in improving students’ ethical and moral outcomes: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nature Human Behaviour. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-026-02456-x

Finding the balance: Navigating perfection and quality in learning design

Finding the balance: Navigating perfection and quality in learning design

Learning

We’ve all been there: another round of feedback, a set of minuscule changes, the deadline looming… In learning, as with any industry, the pursuit of perfection often becomes a double-edged sword. While “perfect is the enemy of good” might sound cliché, it’s a mantra worth remembering. How do I know that? I was guilty of this sin.

Remember, the goal is to create effective learning that delivers real results. Sometimes, that means launching a module that’s at 90% rather than endlessly pursuing that elusive 100%.

The hidden costs of perfectionism

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: over-testing.

How many times have you found yourself in an endless cycle of reviews, where each stakeholder adds their layer of scrutiny? What started as a straightforward module becomes bogged down in multiple rounds of testing, each applying increasingly strict criteria that weren’t part of the original scope.

Consider this scenario:

Your team has developed a compliance training module. The content is solid, the interactions are engaging, and the learning objectives are met. Yet, the project is three weeks behind schedule because:

  • Legal wants another review of every screen
  • The compliance team has new scenarios to add
  • The brand team needs all colours to be exactly 2% darker
  • Someone spotted a full stop that should be a semicolon

Sound familiar?

Striking the Right Balance

1. Define “Good Enough” Early

Work with stakeholders to establish clear acceptance criteria at the project’s outset. Document:

  • Essential compliance requirements
  • Minimum technical specifications
  • Core learning outcomes
  • Acceptable quality thresholds

2. Implement a Staged Review Process

Rather than waiting for everything to be perfect:

  • Conduct early prototype reviews
  • Use rapid development cycles
  • Get stakeholder sign-off on content before visual design
  • Lock down feedback stages with clear deadlines

3. Focus on Learning Impact

Ask yourself:

  • Will this change significantly improve learning outcomes?
  • Is this feedback addressing a genuine learning need?
  • Could this time be better spent on other aspects of the project?

Ask the team:

  • Are we testing the right things?
  • Does this feedback cycle add value?
  • What’s the cost of delay vs. the benefit of changes?
  • How will learners benefit from these revisions?

4. Adopt Agile Principles

Even in traditional waterfall environments, you can:

  • Release minimum viable modules
  • Gather learner feedback early
  • Plan for post-launch improvements
  • Track and measure actual usage patterns

5. Build Quality into the Process

Instead of endless testing:

  • Create robust design templates
  • Develop style guides and standards
  • Use automated quality checks where possible
  • Implement peer review systems

For Learning Designers

Set Clear Boundaries

  • Establish feedback deadlines
  • Limit review rounds
  • Document scope changes
  • Communicate the impact on timelines (Do it!)

Prioritise Feedback

  • Critical → affects learning outcomes or compliance, e.g. accuracy
  • Important → impacts user experience
  • Nice-to-have → aesthetic preferences

Document Trade-offs. When pushing back on perfectionism, highlight:

  • Budget implications
  • Timeline impacts
  • Opportunity costs
  • Learner benefits

Focus on Continuous Improvement

  • Plan for version updates
  • Track user feedback
  • Monitor completion rates
  • Measure actual performance impact

Quality in learning design is about impact.

By establishing clear standards, implementing efficient processes, and maintaining focus on learner outcomes, we can create high-quality solutions without falling into the perfectionism trap.

The next time you find yourself in the endless review cycle, remember: sometimes good enough is better than perfect, especially when “perfect” means missing deadlines, exceeding budgets, or losing sight of what matters: helping people learn effectively.

Is training the answer?

Is training the answer?

Learning

Thinking more about this idea of real benefit, lately, this story came to mind.

Once upon a time, in a faraway forest*, a Tree from the enchanted forest asked the tiger Laohu to put together a training to teach the elves how to properly log their timesheets. When he asked what for, she explained they were being naughty and “gaming the system”, putting down more time than they actually worked. ‘If you say they’re being naughty’, Laohu asks, ‘it means they know they’re not supposed to do this, right?’ She agrees. ‘And if they’re knowledgeable enough to game the system, it’s not like they don’t know how to do it properly, so it’s not a skill issue. Quite the opposite, they learned it so well, they can now bend the rules, correct?’ The Tree agrees again and says, ‘some managers will even look the other way to keep the site out of trouble and the numbers looking good’.

Laohu let the information sink in for a moment and, after careful consideration, declares: ‘Training is not the answer’. From the top of her age, the elegant oak stares at him in disbe-leaf. He continues, ‘I can do it if that is what you really want, yet this will not solve the problem’. It took him some explaining but, eventually, she agreed. Together, they saved the forest hundreds of thousands of pine coins, and everyone lived happily ever after. Or at least until the next revision cycle of the available training.

(*Any similarities are mere coincidences; no elf was harmed during the production of this story)