Most business people, in the aftermath of the Schabir Shaik and Jacob Zuma affair, uphold the rule of law, accountability and probity. Some, in an excess of zeal, demand the uprooting of all corruption.

However, a few of Zuma or Shaik’s critics have examined their own ethics by the standards they so vehemently judge others. For instance how many individuals are employed, with extravagant remuneration, for their political “connections”?

We do need strict rules of governance and absolutely fair rules of engagement. Unless we have a society where people feel that their efforts and hard work are properly rewarded, we will never succeed. A society in which favours are granted by the powerful in return for patronage is, as Judge Hilary Squires says, malignant.

Like most moralistic causes, however, the purist anticorruption zeal could, if followed to its logical conclusion, lead to a witch-hunt à-là McCarthyism, the Taliban or Spanish Inquisition — in which every hint of sleaze, heresy or rule-transgression would be excoriated, no matter the cost to the individual.

Many business deals are made on the golf course or at an Ellis Park hospitality suite; they could be transgressions of the rules. Except that they could be relationship building — people prefer to do business with those they know and trust, and those they believe want to do business with them — rather than say, going the “cold” route of a tender process.

Relationships are built on risk taking, experimentation, giving benefit of the doubt, learning as one goes and doing what feels right.

Research shows that feelings — which cannot be codified or reduced to rules — are core to imagination and creativity. The process of innovation, because it is based on the irrational, individual and the personal, will therefore inevitably fly in the face of convention.

Richard Branson created Virgin under these conditions; he might have chosen the civil service instead if conditions had not been free. At the same time, the rules of fair competition enabled him to compete fairly with the established market.

The world is not perfect and neither are the humans that inhabit it. Ironically, I find it more difficult to trust someone who claims never to call on a favour than someone who admits to “pulling strings” to get what he needs. Most decent people will tell a white lie to get a traffic fine rescinded or exploit their networks to get a job for someone they cares about.

Paradox is implicit to ethics. Codes are often so general that they are unrealistic. For example, most effective salespeople treat state tenders as “codes to be cracked”. Furthermore, typical codes and policies leave loopholes for opportunists to exploit with corrupt behaviour.

Feelings give integrity and relevance to decisions. The way Mbeki acted in the Shaik-Zuma affair exemplified this: his language and framing; what he revealed and what he concealed; as well as his choice of time and place, seemed less about following laws and procedures than about him personally making a set of strategic choices in the face of a dilemma.

We — business people and the public — had better not think we are entirely holier than Shaik, because in a small, non-criminal way every businessman knows and does part of what Shaik did. Establishing and building networks and circles of influence is a very important part of business and is based on the assumption of building capital, which can be drawn on later for individual benefit.

To Shaik the rules did not matter. All that mattered was the relationship and subjectivity, which he used because he saw an exclusive advantage. We need ongoing, specific, conscious trade-offs to resolve this necessary paradox, in which we understand that subjectivity should be honoured and integrated, but not rule; that objective rules must be obeyed because society is complex and diverse.

But within those rules, our capacity to act effectively must be based on feelings about what is right and what is wrong. For this we have to rely on and honour conscience. Conscience comes from inside of you and depends on how you have been brought up rather than on education. The fine line between relationship and bribery is managed only by conscience.

Yudelowitz is director of consulting firm YSA and author of Smart Leadership.

With acknowledgements to Jonathan Yudelowitz and the Business Day.