Should ethics courses be mandatory at business schools?

There is a heated debate these days on whether or not ethics courses should be mandatory at business schools. Many scholars argue that given all of the ethical problems in business today, ethics should, of course, be compulsory for all business students. They say that the problem of unethical behaviour is so acute that all business courses should be taught through an "ethical" lens. Others argue that ethics courses should not be mandatory because a university should not be teaching morality and telling students what is right versus wrong. Those who teach ethics courses comment that whereas some students seem to benefit from them, other students seem to get little out of them. This debate involves a number of issues. Why aren't people ethical? Whose responsibility is it to teach ethical behaviour? What is the purpose of a business school? I believe that we should be discussing ethical issues with our students but that there is an underlying problem which must first be addressed. This is a lack of critical thinking education. How do we teach ethical decision-making to people who don't think critically? It's difficult for us to understand and make ethical decisions if we can't analyze an issue from different perspectives, have empathy for others, and take into account the effects of our actions on other people. I suggest that we need to first focus on teaching students to be good critical thinkers. Only then can we have the ethics discussion. Increasing the critical thinking ability of our students will probably impact ethical behaviour positively far more than anything else we could do. Perhaps it's not an "ethical" lens that we need to emphasize in business schools, but rather a "thinking" lens.