How Well-Meaning Leaders Can End Up at the Heart of Major Corporate Scandals, with Guido Palazzo

Iman Mossavat brings listeners a gripping conversation with Dr. Guido Palazzo, Professor of Business Ethics at EPFL Lausanne, on the hidden forces behind corporate scandals. Palazzo discusses his latest book, The Dark Pattern, co-authored with Dr. Ulrich Hoffrage, which reveals how well-intentioned leaders can become ethically blind under powerful organizational pressures. He outlines nine recurring conditions, such as toxic leadership, unrealistic goals, and euphemistic language, that create a culture where wrongdoing becomes normalized. Palazzo also explains how technology and AI can deepen ethical failure by adding distance and abstraction. This episode offers a framework for understanding—and preventing—ethical breakdowns, grounded in real-world scandals from major global companie