Winning the Right Way: Managerial Ethics 3400 With David Bywater

The Huntsman School of Business recently concluded its seven-week Managerial Ethics 3400 course this semester, co-taught by executive leader David Bywater and John Ferguson, principal lecturer in the Department of Management.

The course was intentionally designed as an intersection of academia and industry. Built around five real management dilemmas from Bywater’s career, students were challenged to analyze complex ethical decisions under pressure and learn where financial, legal and reputational consequences collided.

“Bringing together my academic foundations and structure and combining it with David’s industry knowledge and experience created an opportunity for students to bridge the gap between classroom learning and real-world application,” Ferguson said. “Students found real value in this merger and I found it to be a growth opportunity as well. David is not just a great businessman, but he is someone who has a real heart for students, which made it possible for us to work together to work up this experience.”

For Bywater, teaching at the Huntsman School represents a full-circle moment. A Cache Valley native who attended Utah State early in his academic journey, he originally thought he would pursue a doctorate and become a professor. While working as a head teaching assistant in the economics department, he noticed that the most effective professors were those who had meaningful industry experience.

“They could connect the dots,” he said. “I love theory. But what I really value is, What does it mean?”

That insight led him into consulting and eventually executive leadership. After decades of running companies, he returned to the classroom this year with a clear purpose: to bridge theory and practice.

“The classroom is more than a classroom,” he said. “It’s where you put yourself to learn.”

Rather than hypothetical case studies, students examined real situations Bywater experienced throughout his career: a failing health care division losing $500,000 per month; 20,000 unprocessed claims destroyed to conceal performance gaps; a multi-million-dollar contract compromised by improper bidding information; a CEO opportunity built on false financial disclosures; and a public company navigating SEC scrutiny and executive instability.

“These weren’t clean decisions,” Bywater said. “They were situations where you’re boxed in and there’s no obvious right answer.”

Each case required students to weigh financial consequences, legal exposure, employee impact and long-term reputational risk. Throughout the course, Bywater emphasized that ethical leadership is a long game.

“You might have a great 30-month career,” he said. “But you won’t have a great 30-year career if you don’t win the right way.”

Over the seven-week course, he returned to two guiding principles: Celebrate the “genius of the end rather than the tyranny of the now,” and always be able to face “the man in the mirror.”

“Every day I’ve got to look at that mirror and say, am I square with this person? Is the way that they’re acting and behaving and leading something that I’m super comfortable with everyone watching?” he said. “I love to win. But the end has to be that I win, and I win the right way.”

That philosophy was reinforced by Tessa White, known as The Job Doctor and current chair of the USU Board of Trustees, who worked alongside Bywater during a critical period in one of his companies.

“David taught me more about how to lead than any other leader I’ve worked with,” White said. “He showed up to lead our company when we were weeks away from not being able to make payroll. Our exec team had change fatigue and didn’t trust each other or the company. He made a commitment to unwavering truth telling. He led with full transparency and it built trust rather than break it. Five years later, he sold the company for $5.4 billion in one of the most successful acquisitions in Blackstone history. He is an uncommon leader in the best of ways.”

For Bywater, success in the classroom won’t be measured at the end of a semester.

“I hope 10 years from now they run into me and say, ‘That class mattered,’” he said. “That it helped them find their moral center and gave them courage when it counted.”

Managerial Ethics 3400 reinforces a central Huntsman principle: business performance and ethical leadership are not competing priorities. The course will be offered again this fall.