A year ago, at the end of 2024, after looking at the analytics for the website where The Right Thing weekly column gets posted after it has run in publications that carry it, it was clear that readers were most drawn to columns that focused on being an engaged citizen, companies that prop up bad behavior in advertisements, learning to lose gracefully, not allowing pretension to get in the way of our message, and whether companies are obligated to honor commitments even if they were made in jest.
In 2025, the five columns viewed the most touched on the reliability of artificial intelligence, Googling prospective acquaintances, full disclosure by product reviewers, letting online friends know you were cutting ties and trusting columnists without checking their facts.
The fifth-most viewed column, “If a columnist tells you something, check it out,” ran in late August. In it, I recounted how a news program once misidentified my profession and how I’d recently misspoke on a podcast interview. In each instance, I felt the importance of acknowledging the error and urged readers to double-check facts before they spread them as gospel.
A July column, “Should I tell a social media friend that I’m cutting them?” reassured a reader there was nothing unethical about pruning the list of people she connects with online without feeling compelled to alert them they were being dumped or added.
The answer to “Should reviewers disclose receiving compensation?” which also ran in July was an emphatic “yes.” Being transparent about when you’re receiving compensation to review any product lets readers know about potential biases in the reviews they read.
In early August, I asked: “Is it OK to Google someone you’re about to meet?” While there’s no replacement to getting to know someone in person, it’s also perfectly fine and often wise to gather as much information about a person as you can before meeting them.
Finally, by far the most viewed Right Thing column of the year was June’s “Are you responsible for checking your AI work?” I mentioned that I’d asked several chatbots to write my biography and while most of the information about me was accurate, they also named a wife, children, grandchildren and great grandchildren who didn’t exist in my life, had me living with my imaginary wife in Manhattan for a couple of years, and bestowed a fellowship from a Utah university I’d never received. Even without those hallucinations, the right thing is to double-check whatever AI tells you is true.
As 2025 drew to a close, I was reminded of the opening of a Lucille Clifton poem:
i am running into a new year
and the old years blow black
like a wind
that I catch in my hair
Thank you for continuing to email your questions, stories and reactions to The Right Thing column. May your years continue to be full of doing the right thing while surrounded by those who choose to do the same and may you face whatever the coming year’s winds bring you.
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 to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.
Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.
(c) 2026 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.
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