At some point, the Central Iowa business community needs to consider the troubling lessons of these past few difficult years.

We’re not talking here about financial regulations and regional diversification and other such nuts-and-bolts bookkeeping issues. We’re referring to ethics.

As the recession ground along, we reassured ourselves that Greater Des Moines always benefits from a cautious, sensible approach to business, and that’s true. We expected that the shocks of a global meltdown would be tempered by the time they struck us, and they were.

But now it’s time to figure out whether those shocks caused cracks in our business standards or simply revealed them.

We like to think that Iowa in general is a place of honest and straightforward dealing, a place where even hard-driving business people can be expected to do things right, or at least not dangerously wrong.

The Equitable Building asbestos case should serve as a landmark. It’s time to consider all of the regrettable things that have plagued our business community in the past few years.

Along with this example of willful neglect of proper safety procedures, our little business world has suffered through bankruptcies that were caused by recklessness and created scores of victims, questionable dealing that led to personal tragedy, accusations of mismanagement by partners and more.

Any group will have its share of soap opera moments, given a long enough period of time, but it’s ethics that concern us, not bad luck.

The ideal community would honor the most principled people, not just the richest ones.

Some of our finest community leaders have taken great pains to emphasize character in our schools and now civility everywhere. We would add business ethics as a focus. It’s not a wave of unethical behavior, but the bad examples are accumulating. Unchecked, they will redefine our community.