A look back at the year in doing the right thing

At the end of each year, I take stock of the 52 or so Right Thing columns I've written to get a sense of the scope of topics I've covered, the types of concerns readers share, and what I might do better in the coming year.

I also regularly look at which columns seemed to draw the most attention from readers.

I try to gauge reader interest to get a sense of what type of ethical issues seem most important to readers in their day-to-day lives. I look at the analytics of the website where the weekly column gets posted after it has run in publications subscribing to it.

The five most viewed columns in 2019 touched on honesty, cheating, courtesy and racism.

The fifth-most-viewed column, "If you meet racism atthe store, do you call it out?" ran in October. It focused on an item sold at a reader's local big box department store that featured a racist saying on it. Noting that it was wrong for the store to carry such an item, I urged the store to reconsider. I emailed a copy of the column to an executive at the company, and it was acknowledged. The item still is carried on the store's website, however. They should remove it and do better about not carrying offensive items.

The fourth-most-viewed column, "Do employers haveresponsibility to let applicants know when they didn't get the job?" ran in February. I think that employers have an obligation to respond in a timely fashion to applicants who are not offered a job. Readers are right to find such ghosting objectionable.

The third-most-viewed column, "To tidy up, can Itell a small fib?" also ran in February. After donating household items to the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation the prior year, a reader was given a receipt with the date left blank. The reader asked if it would be wrong to use the receipt to claim tax deductible items again this year and just fill out a new date even though she had already taken the deduction for those items. Cheating on your taxes is illegal. Lying is wrong.

The second-most-viewed column, "Don't cheat your waytoward college admission, but do this ..." ran in March. It was a response to the college admission scandal involving many celebrities and wealthy parents. Obviously, it's wrong to lie to get a child into a college. But my column focused on giving free advice to prospective students on how to write a strong and honest application essay. The advice remains available for anyone who cares to use it.

Finally, the most-viewed column of the year, "Do youbelieve others will do the right thing?" ran in July. In it, I wrote about a study that showed that people are more likely to return wallets containing money than those that contained no money, a result which ran counter to what most felt would be the case. The results were a heartening reminder that when faced with the challenge, most people will do the right thing.

Thank you for filling my email with another great year of questions and stories and for continuing to read The Right Thing column. May you have a year full of both doing the right thing and being surrounded by those who choose to do the same. 

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: @jseglin 

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

(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.