Here’s a somewhat radical idea: jobs should not only help us grow professionally, but also ethically.

That’s the argument made in recent research by Maryam Kouchaki, a professor of management and organizations. She and a coauthor argue that workplaces—where, after all, we spend much of our lives—should be places for ethical learning that goes far beyond a single annual training. Today we’ll look at some of their suggestions.

Building a Moral Laboratory

In order for employees to grow ethically, companies should seek to become “moral laboratories,” Kouchaki explains. “With laboratories and experiments, you have to be patient and persistent and test different things,” she says. “It comes with an assumption that it’s acceptable to fail and learn from that.”

Kouchaki explains that there’s a pragmatic case to be made for building up these moral laboratories. “There’s evidence that more ethical companies have happier employees and do better in the market,” she says. Beyond this, she believes it’s simply the right thing to do. “Companies have ethical responsibilities toward their stakeholders, which includes employees and society.”

Here are a few research-backed ideas for helping employees grow ethically:

Make it safe to learn from failure: Leaders from the C-suite on down need to show that it’s OK to admit ethical missteps. Companies should also respond to small ethical lapses in ways that promote learning rather than embarrassment. “When you create a psychologically safe environment, people are going to be willing to ask questions and reflect and learn as a group,” Kouchaki says.

Encourage reflection: Another way to ensure everyone is learning from both successes and failures is to create as many opportunities as possible for ethical reflection. For example, many companies already conduct postmortems when important projects end. Kouchaki suggests integrating a set of moral-reflection questions into these meetings, such as: Was this project and process consistent with our values? Did we cross any lines? Was anyone harmed?

Promote humility: We all like to think we’ll walk the straight and narrow if faced with a moral dilemma. But moral overconfidence is associated with an inability to admit one’s mistakes, and that, of course, hinders growth. Kouchaki suggests pointing out that very human tendency toward hubris so that everyone knows that we all are susceptible to moral failings, not just a few bad apples.

Read more about creating an ethical culture in your organization here.

How to Be More Innovative

Most organizations are eager to innovate. But it’s not always an easy thing to achieve. To understand the right way to do innovation, I asked several Kellogg professors what they think organizations tend to get wrong about innovating. Here are some of their answers:

Paul Earle, adjunct lecturer of innovation and entrepreneurship and principal of Paul Earle & Co., an innovation consultancy and venture platform: “Leaders need to stop trying to remove or ‘correct’ things that are anomalous and even a little weird, and instead lean into it. Weird is magic and is where all the exponential growth comes from. I love what Paul McCartney said in reflecting on how and why the Beatles were so incredibly differentiated, and still are: ‘When we’d make a mistake, we’d usually keep it.’”

Benjamin Jones, professor of strategy: “While marketing and sales are often thought of as communicating to customers, a key functionality is listening to customers. The goal is to understand exactly what customer needs are so that R&D is tailored to meet those specific needs.

“Modern innovation mantras—whether it is ‘design thinking’ in corporate innovation or ‘lean startup’ methods for entrepreneurs—rightly put understanding the user at the center of the innovation process, where iterative communications and testing with users directs R&D goals. Organizationally, this means that leaders need to actively connect their R&D-focused teams, with their technical skills, to their customer-focused teams in marketing and sales. Beyond the benefits in directing innovation to high-demand needs, this connectivity builds trust with customers and avoids disconnects between product promises and product realities.”

Katie Arnold, adjunct lecturer of innovation and entrepreneurship and founder of SPRIG, a strategic marketing firm specializing in medical technology: “Organizations often take shortcuts to save time or capital and forgo the important step of incorporating the voice of the customer (VOC) early and often, only to end up having a product that fails to launch or does not meet a market need. Companies with innovations that have incorporated VOC throughout the development process tend to end up with a better product-market fit and more success.

“Many organizations fail to integrate this critical feedback into the development process and end up with an unforeseen or unsolvable market dilemma. In the medical space, VOC must evaluate the needs across multiple stakeholders, including patients, physicians, payors and providers (e.g. hospital systems). While these stakeholders may not generate alignment across elements of the development process, conducting this exercise initially and repeating it as needed is critical to determine a prioritization of decisions. It also helps you understand when you are specifically electing to tradeoff one stakeholder for another.”