PROVO — As followers of Jesus Christ, Latter-day Saints have a responsibility to behave with integrity and reject the moral relativism that pervades modern society.

That was the message during the first sessions of a two-day ethics conference that began Thursday at Brigham Young University, where students and faculty were urged to be men and women of character who deal honestly with workplace issues and refuse to cut corners just because others do so.

Alan Parkinson, dean of the college of engineering and technology, told an overflow crowd that examples of recent unethical behavior at such corporate giants as Boeing and Siemens offer several cautionary tales. Among them is the notion that top administrators are responsible for their own corporate culture and whether it fosters integrity or supports a "win-at-all-costs" mentality.

In both cases, when faced with evidence of bribery or use of proprietary information that came to them unethically, top managers said the problems were "isolated incidents," Parkinson said. "But that claim turned out to be a means of denying the pervasiveness" of such behavior within the companies, he said.

He told students that whether in the workplace or at home, personal ethics "is your responsibility, not someone else's." It's not enough to just have a general commitment to be ethical. "You must be sensitive to the subtleties and ethical questions that will arise and look for the means of resolving them," he said.

Parkinson urged his audience to "be guided by the spirit" in the way they resolve such issues, employing humility rather than self-righteousness. "There is no compromise on what you know to be right but attempt to influence others through gentleness and meekness."

He said his department has initiated a new class, "Moral Leadership in a Technological World," and urged students to enroll.

Robert Millet, professor of ancient scripture, said people of deep religious faith have a responsibility to help restore integrity in the world, even as many leaders in high places are entangled in scandal and moral relativism masquerades as virtue.

"We live in a day of information explosion — and moral erosion." He said the lack of an integral religious base is at the heart of the problem. "Often what we believe has no effect on what we do."

In the 1960s among academic elites, the "God is dead" movement was at first considered "meaningless and absurd," postulating that God had died in the hearts of men and women. But it symbolized a growing distancing from religious traditions and values, leaving cynicism and skepticism in its wake.

At some point, truth became "a matter of taste, and morality was replaced by individual preference," as ethical relativism taught that any moral system was too shallow to provide answers in every situation.