"Everyone is doing it" is no basis for doing it yourself

Years ago, after I had left my job as a magazine editor and took a significant cut in pay to become an assistant professor at a liberal arts college in the Northeast, a senior colleague advised me that from time to time I should apply for other teaching jobs even if I didn't want them.

He let me know that this was common practice among college professors since getting an offer with a high salary was pretty much the only way we could hope to get a significant raise as a counteroffer from our school. Over the decade or so I taught there, I considered applying for new jobs elsewhere and ultimately accepted my current position. I never tried to use an offer from somewhere else as leverage to get more money.

This might have been foolish, but I enjoyed working with the students at my school and, even though I knew I was not the most highly paid person in my position, I felt like I was fairly paid for the work.

Is it wrong to apply for jobs and use an offer as leverage with your current employer even if you don't really want the new job? Of course not. It might be a bit disingenuous to claim you're willing to accept a better salary offer from somewhere else if you have no intention of leaving. But who knows if when faced with a better offer you might decide to move on. If you're willing to accept the outcome of your attempt at negotiating -- more money or not more money -- regardless if you stay or go, then have at it.

A problem, however, with institutions failing to regularly evaluate whether their employees are fairly compensated rather than rely on the fear of losing someone to someplace else when presented with that reality is that it creates an odd incentive for some employees to be on a constant job search in hopes of extricating more money from their current employer.

The worst outcome is when employees simply lie about counteroffers, as a former professor at Colorado State University appears to have done. According to reports from CBS4 in Denver and The Chronicle ofHigher Education, the former professor went to the trouble to fabricate an offer letter from the University of Minnesota. The fabrication worked and resulted in a raise.

Now, he faces a felony charge for his handiwork.

In a letter reprinted on the Chronicle's website, the former professor essentially used the "everyone does it" excuse claiming that he knew of others who had used the same technique, a charge that does not appear to have been backed up by evidence. "I'm not excusing it, and I'm not excusing my own actions, but these factors are real," the former professor wrote.

The right thing, as you all know or should know, is not to lie or fabricate or falsify information to get what you believe you have coming to you -- even if you believe everyone else is doing so. Once you do so, the likelihood is that you'll get what's coming to you, even if it's not what you had hoped for. 

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 

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

Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 

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