Do you hear what I hear?

When you hear people talking about you when you know you were not meant to hear them, is it OK to keep listening? That's what a reader from Utah wants to know.

The reader is an employee of a publicly funded institution whose board is required to hold open and public meetings. She was attending one such meeting when the board decided to go into closed session.

The reader left the room where the board was meeting and moved about 10 feet down the hall with others to wait until the end of the closed session. The door to the boardroom was closed.

"I was chatting in the hallway with another employee," she writes. "After a while, because of raised voices, I became aware that they were talking about me and my performance."

At the end of the board meeting, the reader told the members of the board that she was aware of the general topics they discussed because she had overhead parts of their conversation.

Several days later she was told by a board member that it had been unethical for her to stay in the hallway where she was standing because she could overhear.

She disagrees.
 

"Under normal circumstances, I would not have been able to hear the conversation if they had been talking in normal tones," she writes. "I don't feel I have an ethical obligation to move away from a conversation if the conversation becomes loud enough for me to hear when I have taken normal precautions not to hear."

She makes clear that she was not able to hear all of the conversation, just bits and pieces.

Because other members of the public could have just as easily been in the hallway with the reader, she believes that they would "certainly not have had any obligation to move."

"Was it unethical for me to stay where I was knowing they were talking about me?" she asks.

My reader shouldn't be held accountable for board members who chose to go into closed session and lacked the judgment to keep overheated and loud conversations in check. Because they went into the closed session presumably to protect the privacy of whomever it was they were discussing, they should have made sure that their discussion did not result in violating that privacy.

Was it wrong for the reader to stand 10 feet down the hall and not move when she realized she and others could hear? Not exactly.

But given that it was clear to those in attendance that the closed session was intended to be among the board members and no one else, once it became clear that the board's conversation was emanating into the hallway, the right thing would have been for someone to interrupt them and tell them that they were talking loudly enough that their voices were carrying through the closed door and well down the hall.

It might have been embarrassing for the reader to be the one reminding them of this since it became clear she was the subject of their discussion. But she could have encouraged someone else to inform the board. And that would have allowed the board members to show the judgment and discretion they should have shown when they entered the closed session in the first place. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/jseglin or facebook at https://www.facebook.com/seglin

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

 

(c) 2013 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

The homeless at the door

Every day, a man who appears to be homeless sits on a curb near a retail store in a strip mall, holding a sign that reads "help needed." The mall is in a mid-size town in the San Francisco Bay Area. The man has been appearing for more than a year. He also makes daily rounds to other spots in town.

An owner of a retail store in the mall is conflicted in her attitude toward the man.

"I feel that his presence may cause people not to come into my store," she writes. Several times a day she walks by him as he sits on the curb -- and ignores him.

She has spoken about the situation to her landlord, who has called police. However, the police say the man has a right to be there.

"He is very intelligent," my reader writes. She's heard him debate with others quite articulately over his right to be there. She has also heard him tell people about the abuse he suffered as a boy. She indicates that he also "displays symptoms of mental illness."

"As a human being, I want to have compassion, but can't find it in my heart," she writes -- adding that as a Christian, her faith is important to her and causes her to struggle with her attitude toward the man. "It makes me feel mean when I walk by him several times a day and ignore him."

When situations arise that test the multiple values we hold, it can indeed be trying. The reader who owns the store would like to run a successful business that attracts customers so she can provide for herself and her family. For many people, the value placed on the health and well-being of their families tops their priorities.

Does this mean that their other values -- such as caring for others in need -- are somehow diminished because they come second? Not necessarily, although such situations as the store owner's do seem to be a test of how far she will go to honor her values.

It's understandable not to want someone who might make customers anxious loitering outside the door of a retailer. Still, we always have a right to choose whether and when to give to those asking for money.

This fellow, though, seems to be asking for "help." Presumably, the assumption is that he wants money. But if he is indeed homeless and mentally ill, perhaps there are other forms of help that the store owner might seek advice about in an effort to serve both the man's needs and her own. I'm not sure she can determine the state of his mental capacity on her own, but she should certainly be able to consult with public health officials about this issue.

If it's truly not the time it would take to address the issue, but instead the desire not to have the man scare off existing or potential customers with his presence, then to preserve her values of earning a livelihood and also helping those in need, the right thing could be to see if there's a way to help this fellow that in turn might result in helping herself. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglinhttps://twitter.com/jseglin 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2013 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Signs of our times

Banner honoring Martin Richard's words hanging over Route 93 in Boston. Designed by Liz Carney of Dot Art and created by neighborhood children and volunteers in Savin Hill area.

It's been an eventful few weeks in Boston.

The Boston Marathon, typically a celebratory event, was met with terror and tragedy. Just days later, people in the city and surrounding municipalities were voluntarily "sheltering in place" as law enforcement worked to find the men suspected of placing and detonating the bombs that killed and maimed.

Soon after the identities of the three people killed by the bomb blast were made known, photos of Martin Richard, the young boy from my part of Boston who died in one of the blasts, were shown with him holding a sign with the words, "No more hurting people" and "Peace."

An artist who runs a children's arts program in our community came up with the idea to have neighborhood children work on a banner featuring Martin's words. The plan was to paint the 85-foot banner on recycled acrylic wallpaper and then hang it from a bridge overlooking a highway that leads into Boston. Hundreds of kids showed up to paint on the Saturday after police caught the suspect. Adults showed up to help.

Early on Sunday morning, the artist emailed me to ask if she could give me a call. She told me she was concerned because she had not obtained a permit from the city of Boston to hang the banner. I reassured her that it was unlikely anyone would question the spirit of the banner or request that it be taken down for lack of a permit, but I suggested she call our district city councilor.

To ask him to secure a permit for us? she asked.

No, I responded, to ask him to come help us.

I figured that if our city councilor were involved in hanging the sign, the chances of the city taking it down were less likely.

Given that we still had no permit to hang the sign, was this the right thing to do?

If we had been asked to take the sign down, I certainly would have assisted in doing so (we didn't actually know if we needed a permit, although Boston being Boston, we assumed we did), but in this case, it seemed wise to heed the advice I first heard spoken years ago by Adm. Grace Hopper: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission."

As our artist friend stayed and painted with the children, a 12-year-old boy from the neighborhood, our city councilor and my wife and I walked up to the bridge to start attaching the unwieldy banner. As we struggled to keep it in place by attaching it to the bridge by using zip ties, other neighbors began stopping to help hold it in place. Soon, there were more than a couple dozen people attaching the sign.

Photos of the effort, including our city councilor affixing the banner to the bridge, were posted to Facebook. People shared images of the sign itself more than 3,800 times, often with messages of appreciation after having seen it while driving into the city.

No one asked where the permit was to hang the banner. No one asked that it be taken down. The response was just appreciation from people for seeing the words from a little boy asking people to do the right thing. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglinhttps://twitter.com/jseglin 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2013 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Sweeping others' mistakes under the rug

Computers make mistakes. Let me rephrase that a bit: If incorrect information is put into a computer by a human being, then that computer is likely to make a mistake in computing whatever it is supposed to be computing. Garbage in, garbage out, goes the saying.

It's a customer's responsibility to point out an error at the cash register if a product is clearly scanned incorrectly. Some stores, like a supermarket we wrote about recently, have a policy of honoring an incorrectly scanned price if it results from their mistake. But other times, it's the customer's responsibility to fork over the amount he or she had intended to pay but that rang up cheaper.

Just as you wouldn't believe it to be OK to keep $1,000 from a bank's ATM when your intent was to get $100 and the withdrawal record only shows $100, you shouldn't think it's OK to keep a $129.95 waffle maker if you end up being charged for a $9.95 oven mitt at the cash register and the receipt only shows $9.95.

With some degree of pleasure, a neighbor told me that he had been undercharged for a small rug recently at a discount store when it scanned as a cheaper product. My neighbor knows what I write for a living and he prefaced his story by telling me he had "an ethical thing" happen recently.

Before I could respond that I thought he should have pointed out the discrepancy to the clerk at the cash register, though, he continued with his story -- and explained that because the rug is for a high-traffic area, he was concerned it would wear out quickly. Fearing that the store might stop carrying this rug that fit perfectly in the spot he needed to cover, and also wanting to seize the opportunity to get a deal if the rugs remained incorrectly priced, he returned to the store. He picked out three more rugs and brought then to the checkout, where the clerk proceeded to ring up his order.

That's when my neighbor noticed that the same incorrect price showed up again on the register. What he didn't notice until he was out the door and heading to his car was that the clerk had charged him for one rug, not three.

He thought about returning to report the mistake, but decided not to, figuring that if the store was so careless as to not get its prices right and a clerk so inattentive that he didn't charge for all items, the fault was not his but theirs.

He's right, of course. It was their fault. If the store wants to stay in business for the long run, it would be wise to have its employees do a better job of charging its customers the right amount.

But my neighbor was wrong not to point out the incorrect scan and uncharged-for rugs -- not because the clerk might get in trouble and not because the store might go out of business if enough customers take advantage of such mistakes, but because that would have been the right thing to do.

Getting a deal is fine. Getting the deal when you know it's built on someone else's unintended mistake is not. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. 

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglinhttps://twitter.com/jseglin 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

(c) 2013 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.