About Rotary - The Four-Way Test

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The Four-Way Test

Rotarians are committed to promoting high ethical standards in their professional and personal lives. The Four-Way Test was created by Rotarian Herbert J. Taylor in 1932 as a code of ethics for the employees of a struggling Chicago aluminum company has was asked to take charge of. The Four-Way Test became the guide for sales, production, advertising and customer relations -- and was credited with the survival of the company. Adopted by Rotary International in 1943, it is one of the world's most widely printed and quoted statements of ethical principals. It has been translated into more than one hundred languages and published in thousands of ways. The 24-word code asks:

Of the things we think, say or do

1.  Is it the TRUTH?

2.  Is it FAIR to all concerned?

3.  Will it build GOODWILL and BETTER FRIENDSHIPS?

4.  Will it be BENEFICIAL to all concerned?

Rotarian Herb retold the concept of the test in his own words:

“To win our way out of this situation, I reasoned we must be morally and ethically strong. I knew that in right there was might. I felt that if we could get our employees to think right they would do right. We needed some sort of ethical yardstick that everybody in the company could memorize and apply to what we thought, said, and did in our relations to others.

So one morning I leaned over on my desk, rested my head in my hands. In a few moments, I reached for a white paper card and wrote down that which had come to me – in twenty-four words.”

When a company advertisement was placed before Herb, declaring his aluminum product as “the greatest cooking ware in the world,” Herb simply stated “We can’t prove that.” The advert was rewritten simply stating the facts.