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.
1 comment:
Thanks for your columns, Jeffrey, and your reassurance that while some folks need a reminder to rise above their impulses, others find it natural to do the right thing. Since it makes us feel a little better about ourselves and our fellow man to hear about people making sacrifices or resisting temptation, it would be good if you presented a few such stories from time to time as an alternative to giving advice to readers facing relatively minor dilemmas.
Happy new year.
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