In public schools and then public colleges, I was given a healthy dose of “ethical” and “moral” development education, and I think that some of it may have been counterproductive in the real world.
I was told repeatedly of my responsibility to be proactively on guard to protect myself from misconduct (including a little “lesson” where a box was passed around (apparently innocuously) and we were told later that we should have checked if the box contained drugs, because if it did, we would have been in trouble). I was required to take an ethics course in college, where we were warned of professional duties and our need to be willing to report misconduct in the office, and that employees that were complicit were as guilty as the ones who dreamt up the violations.
Well, on the job one day, taking some of these things to heart, I “reported” suspected contractual misconduct by a manager.
IT HIT THE FAN.
I was brought before an inquisition and told “HOW DARE YOU!” accuse management of misconduct, etc. etc. and that it was none of my business to be on watch for ethical problems, but it was my duty to obey whatever management told me.
In retrospect, I’m a bit surprised that I was even able to keep my job, but I eventually left the company a few months later, and they said that I was eligible for rehire, so it apparently ended ok.
What do you guys think? Is it really the job of Joe Timeclock to watch his task orders to make sure that they are ethical and legal, or should he blindly obey and assume that all guilt for misconduct sticks to management (Well, the Captain said to kill Jews, so I did. It’s his fault, I was following orders.)?
I think that ethics does come into play in the workplace. At the same time, there are many, many workplaces that won’t look kindly on doing the ethical thing, and I can’t fault someone for not risking their job in such circumstances. I’ve been there myself. No matter how clear-cut the circumstances may be, the messenger tends to get punished.
In my case, my manager was tweaking at work, sleeping with his employee in his office during work hours, and sending said employee hardcore pornography which was viewed by said employee publicly and in view of others (who reported sexual harassment concerns to me). It was a really clear-cut problem and needed immediate response, not only for ethical reasons, but for legal liability reasons.
Because his immediate manager didn’t respond to the issue and was the most senior person on site, we went to corporate. This was policy, actually; we had an ‘ethics hotline’ to use in these circumstances. They did respond, and the person was eventually fired, but, it definitely took me (and a peer who also got involved) out of running for promotion. You can’t really prove retaliation very easily. The boss of my ex-boss was very when you’re already doing the duties of a position and then are told that you have insufficient experience to qualify (but someone with less experience than you, in both years of service and specific experience with said tasks, gets the job) … I mean, I’m not dumb. In the end, the boss’s boss was also fired eventually, though it was called a ‘layoff’. His position and title were replaced, of course, so it really wasn’t.
I’m still glad I did what I did, and ultimately getting out of that job (as I did within a few months) was a good thing. However, I don’t think it’s unethical to turn the other way as a low-level employee if you’re likely to encounter this sort of resistance, depending on the severity of the ethical problem. Doing the right thing is good, but losing your livelihood is a tall enough order that I’m unwilling to judge people for putting themselves in that position.
Yes. It is your job, and ethically your responsibility. You did the right thing and you’re far better off away from them.
Employers ignoring or failing to report unethical conduct can lead to Enrons, Goldman-Sachs’s or worse. I don’t know the particulars, but ignoring that kind of thing can let safety violations go unchecked, cost shareholders or innocent employees money or jobs.
Yeah, there could be a “price” to pay in being shunned for not playing along, or retribution of some kind, but the way I feel about it is that in the morning the only face I have to look at in the mirror is my own, and I want to know it was clean.
Your ethics classes only failed in that they didn’t inform you that doing the ethical thing usually ends up with you getting burned as well, which allows you the better chance to make your choice in the full knowledge of the shit you’re about to land yourself into.
It’s a sad lesson, but an important one. If you do the right thing, most of the time you are going to get punished for it in some way or another. If it’s important to you, you’ll do the right thing anyway, but it’s nice to have a head’s-up that you’re screwed because of it.
I learned from working in H/R just how unethical companies are.
I also learned if there is a problem you NEVER go to the company. You go to the press and do it anonymously. If you have to take something to H/R, you should be looking for a new job, because it WILL come back at you.
Companies want ethics and they want responsible employees but they don’t want to be bothered with the details. You really have to look out for number one, and keep your eyes ONLY on what effects you.
I also learned from being an internal auditor a lot of companies have WEIRD policies when it comes to weeding out unethical things.
For instance, I found people stealing, and I had YEARS of evidence, and yet the company would insist that the person stealing still be kept on so they could get “new” evidence on them, even when we had enough to prove theft.
So, the class taught that one should be paranoid about a box in a classroom situation but not paranoid about the impact of reporting an ethics violation by management? That’s pretty poor.
Was the ethics violation something the company did as more or less policy (like Enron) or something a specific manager did to cut corners. If the former, reporting it internally is not going to do any good. In the latter case it might, because higher levels of management aren’t going to want to risk a big customer because some clown can’t do the job correctly.
Did the class talk about documentation? About ethics policies and hotlines? Any clue about how the real world works?
All the ethics education I’ve ever had (through work) was more about avoiding getting caught by ethics laws than it was about actually being ethical. Along the lines of “don’t pinch your secratary’s ass because it is unethical and therefore we will all get in trouble if you get caught.” So, ethics, in my experience, has different meanings inside and out a company. It’s unethical if other companies do backroom trading, it’s good business if mine does because we would never allow it to get out of hand, for example.
You may like working for a larger company better. I work for an insurance company that has an email address and phone number for its own ombudsman, which allows totally anonymous reporting of ethical violations. Our company is huge, so it’s easy to find someone to report something to who isn’t in a position to make decisions about your promotions, and we have to take ethical certifications annually (at least, sometimes more often).
Look for a company like mine, if you can. I’ve never been put in a position where I’m being asked to violate my ethics, and I’ve never witnessed an ethics violation in my 2.5 years here thus far. Companies that take ethics very seriously DO exist. I just don’t know how “normal” it is.
The “box” lesson was in high school, and we were basically being taught that criminal intent and knowledge didn’t matter, you had to be paranoid and protect yourself, since saying that you didn’t know that the box contained drugs was no defense (though, public school discipline can be rather awkward and arbitray, lol). What was that supposed to teach me?
The following didn’t actually happen, but it seems a logical result of the “box” lesson.
Teacher: “I need everyone to take one of these worksheets and do problems 1-10.”
Goody Goody Student: “Could you excuse me for a moment?”
Teacher: “Why?”
Goody Goody Student: “I need to check the paper for drug residue, and call the police to check for any incidents of stolen paper or ink.”
Teacher: “Get to work!”
Goody Goody Student: “Remember that drug box lesson? If this worksheet was printed on stolen paper or if it contains drug residue, I can be suspended and recommended for expulsion, and not knowing is no defense! I have to protect myself!”
In retrospect, that may have affected me later in a negative way.
The ethics violation by managment matter was out of a college class, and yes, it was more toward #2, “something a specific manager did to cut corners.”
Then that was either piss-poor training, or you got the wrong message out of it. Which isn’t on you, if it was that unclear, then it’s on whoever produced the training.
Ethical is ethical, no matter if it’s inside or outside of your company.
“Don’t pinch your secretary’s ass”. Period. Full stop.
It’s wrong to do so, but doing so won’t get your whole company in trouble if you get caught. What will hurt your company is if she, or someone else reports that you did it, and there’s no follow-up. No investigation, no consequences, and nothing from the HR people that says “stop pinching your secretary’s ass, because if you do it again (provided you still have a job), you will get fired”.
That’s harassment. A whole different thing than ethical by virtue of there being buttloads of federal regulations requiring employers to address it.
The training I’ve taken uses “how would you feel if your action was on the front page of the paper” as a test, which isn’t unreasonable.
I’ve worked in companies where ethics is taken seriously. I also know of a company who hired a top exec who was fired from another company for lying on his expense account - and then sent out a memo to all employees about why you shouldn’t lie on your expense account. :rolleyes:
The Human Resources Dept of any company exists for the primary purpose of protecting the company from lawsuits. Even the things that are done for the benefit of the employees, are done to protect the company from lawsuits.
Rather than being a resource *for you *as an employee, HR is there to protect the company from you.
This is not widely understood by new employees. It says Human ‘Resources’ so that must be where I go to fix problems. No, no, and oh no!
This box lesson is nonsense. Generally, the legal definition of possession of something requires that the person know of the thing’s presence. Cite. Yes, if the box contained drugs you could be accused of illegal possession. You could also be accused if you never touched the box.
And what are you supposed to learn from this lesson? That you should open and inspect everything you touch just in case it contains something illegal? Good luck keeping your job after opening the boss’s private mail.
I’m wondering that myself. It was definitely real.
I know that, to commit criminal possession, you generally must know what you have, but I think they may have been emphasizing school disciplinary policies, which were worse for the student with vaguer rules, fewer defenses, and less due process. For example, one could be disciplined for “disruptive” behavior. I don’t recall any concise definition of this and it was up to the teacher and/or principal to determine if you had been “disruptive”. One district I attended also claimed extraterritorial jurisdiction over students, and that they could apply school discipline for “offenses” committed against school rules no matter where you were (home, mall, arcade, park, grandma’s, etc.), if the offense “reflected negatively on the school” or something like that. Nobody ever said public schools were logical, and this was in the days of “zero tolerance” with cases like a student coming to school, then realizing that they were wearing a backpack that had been taken on a camping trip and that still contained a knife, and proceeding directly to the main office to turn it in for safekeeping and good faith to the rules, and being punished for it, ignorance being no defense.
I’ve never heard of this lesson and can’t imagine that it serves any useful purpose besides breeding mistrust and paranoia. But then, drugs are far less of a problem here.
However, “protecting yourself from misconduct” has got NOTHING to do with ethics at all; it’s about common sense in the (cutthroat) business world.
This is both morally and legally right.
Do you want to know the ETHICALLY correct action, or the COMMON SENSE correct action? Because those are often at odds in todays business worlds.
Ethically, it’s your duty to be whistleblower when people in your workplace are breaking laws or guidelines; and if managment doesn’t want to listen, you need to turn elsewhere (police, media). Look at how important past whistleblowers have been.
Common sense wise, esp. in this economy, not everybody is cut out to be a hero and deal with the backlash of stirring up shit, or may not be able to afford the financial cuts from risking your job.
But ethics is all about making the right choices, not the easy choices (“Remember Cedric Diggory, when you have to decide between what’s right and what’s easy”).
See post #2. This was a Fortune 100 company and I did use the ethics violation reporting hotline. It’s hard to be anonymous when it’s obvious based on the consequences that you reported it.
Sure, it was policy not to retaliate. Policies are nice and neat like that. Reality is different.
Apparently the company the OP works for is not one that I would like to work for. Companies that don’t take compliance and ethics seriously will not survive over the long term. Somewhere along the line, a shortcut will done, a compliance violation will be overlooked, that WILL come to the light of day and bring that company down. Ask David Duncan from Arthur Anderson.