Making the Right Choice
The Compliance and Ethics group has launched a companywide ethics awareness initiative called Making the Right Choice.
The goals of the initiative are to increase awareness of ethical decision making as the foundation for our business success, to celebrate Progressive’s long-standing Core Values, and to help Progressive people learn more about how they can make the right choice in everything they do.
Corporate Art is pleased to present this exhibition and to join the Compliance and Ethics group in this awareness initiative. Preserving our shared values requires that each of us hone our critical thinking and cultivate our interpretative sensitivity. We may know well the Guiding Principles of our Code of Conduct and be able to recite Progressive’s five Core Values, but living these principles and values requires a thoughtful disposition, a willingness to understand the nuances of ethical dilemmas, an appreciation of the diversity of our colleagues and customers and their often diverging perspectives, and the sobering possibility of opposing truths. Our Guiding Principles and Core Values must be interpreted and applied in real life situations—situations that are often far more complicated and ambiguous than the apparent simplicity of a guideline might suggest.
Art is often beautiful and pleasing, but art at Progressive is more. It’s intended to provoke, intellectually and emotionally. It poses a question and waits quietly and patiently for an answer. Understanding art at Progressive requires a willingness to engage in dialogue: with yourself, with the artists, and with others. Art appreciation requires critical thinking, critical investigation, deep interpretation, careful consideration, and emotional sensitivity. In this way, the disposition we must have toward art at Progressive mirrors the disposition we must have toward our Core Values. After all, artworks, just like values, are only guide posts; it’s the privilege of interpreting them and acting on them that affords us the opportunity for greater depth, success, and satisfaction in both our personal and professional lives.
Please consider the artworks in this exhibition to be case studies, each a scene for investigation, for analysis, and for discussion. You are the sleuth, an art detective, if you’ll forgive the playful title. Ask yourself questions about the works. And then take the time to uncover an answer. And then uncover a different answer. Some of these artworks are elusive riddles, they retreat from the viewer. Other artworks place the viewer, starkly lit, at the fork between two diverging paths. All of these works require your careful consideration and interpretation. Please accept this challenge. The degree of care you give these works during the act of interpretation may indicate the degree of care you give when applying our shared company values.
