Forty members of the U.S. House of Representatives have written to the House Armed Services Committee asking the Pentagon to explain how it can afford to have expelled 58 Arabic-language experts from the U.S. military because they were gay. According to the Associated Press, the letter pointed out that the loss of "capable, highly skilled Arabic linguists continues to compromise our national security during time of war." (The Associated Press article as it ran in the Navy Times is at Sailor among latest Gay Arab linguists booted.)
The U.S. military continues to operate under the "don't ask, don't tell" law that was passed in 1994. Service members cannot be asked about their sexual orientation, but those who are openly gay must be discharged from the U.S. military.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has said that he is not reviewing the policy.
If a shortage of Arabic-language experts is jeopardizing soldiers' lives, is the "don't ask, don't tell" law ethically compromised? Would it be wrong to allow such a decision to be driven by this sort of practical consideration? Or is there a larger ethical reason why the law should stay in place or be overturned?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, your hometown and state or province. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
THE RIGHT THING: EXPENSIVE REPLACEMENTS FOR CHEAP GOODS
When a reader starts off her e-mail "I have done a dumb thing," the story that follows is typically packed with equal parts confession and contrition. Such e-mails often end with a hint from the reader that she thinks, regardless of how clear the evidence is, that perhaps what she did wasn't so dumb and she was more the victim of circumstances.
That's usually why I get such letters. Readers are looking for some absolution from what looks pretty much like a dumb move ... and who better to provide such absolution than an ethics columnist?
In this case, my reader's mother was having knee surgery. My reader mentioned to an acquaintance that she needed a portable commode chair for her mother to use while recuperating. The acquaintance offered to lend her one. When she got it home, however, my reader found that it was very old and rusty, had a torn seat and generally was in poor condition.
Still, she took it to her mother's house to see if she wanted to use it. She didn't, and instead used her walker to get to the bathroom.
Here's where the dumb part comes in: My reader forgot that the commode was on loan and gave it away.
"It was a lapse of judgment," she says.
The commode on loan was so old that its particular model is no longer made. Replacement models run between $140 and $400, and my reader's acquaintance wants $206 to buy a replacement.
"I have paid her the money," my reader writes, "but I wonder what my responsibility was to her. Did I do the right thing or get taken advantage of?"
What my reader wants to know, essentially, is whether the fact that the item she borrowed turned out to be so old and battered that she couldn't use it should have any bearing on whether or not she was obligated to pay the full replacement price to the woman who loaned it to her. Answer: It shouldn't and doesn't.
When we borrow stuff, we're obligated to return that stuff when we're through with it, regardless of whether or not the stuff is as good as we hoped it would be when it was originally described to us. Since it wasn't her property, my reader had no business giving away the borrowed commode.
If she was too embarrassed to tell her acquaintance why she wasn't going to keep the commode, she simply could have returned it and thanked her without a lengthy explanation. Throwing it out or giving it to someone else were not appropriate choices.
The acquaintance has a right to ask for a replacement. If my reader thought that a lower-priced commode might more closely match the one she borrowed, she might have offered an alternative to the $206 model. I'm not sure that quibbling about price would have been appropriate, however, given that she didn't bother to tell the acquaintance that she was giving away the commode.
My reader was not taken advantage of. She did indeed do a dumb thing in giving away something that wasn't hers. But by reimbursing her acquaintance for the item that she borrowed and gave away, she has now done the right thing.
That's usually why I get such letters. Readers are looking for some absolution from what looks pretty much like a dumb move ... and who better to provide such absolution than an ethics columnist?
In this case, my reader's mother was having knee surgery. My reader mentioned to an acquaintance that she needed a portable commode chair for her mother to use while recuperating. The acquaintance offered to lend her one. When she got it home, however, my reader found that it was very old and rusty, had a torn seat and generally was in poor condition.
Still, she took it to her mother's house to see if she wanted to use it. She didn't, and instead used her walker to get to the bathroom.
Here's where the dumb part comes in: My reader forgot that the commode was on loan and gave it away.
"It was a lapse of judgment," she says.
The commode on loan was so old that its particular model is no longer made. Replacement models run between $140 and $400, and my reader's acquaintance wants $206 to buy a replacement.
"I have paid her the money," my reader writes, "but I wonder what my responsibility was to her. Did I do the right thing or get taken advantage of?"
What my reader wants to know, essentially, is whether the fact that the item she borrowed turned out to be so old and battered that she couldn't use it should have any bearing on whether or not she was obligated to pay the full replacement price to the woman who loaned it to her. Answer: It shouldn't and doesn't.
When we borrow stuff, we're obligated to return that stuff when we're through with it, regardless of whether or not the stuff is as good as we hoped it would be when it was originally described to us. Since it wasn't her property, my reader had no business giving away the borrowed commode.
If she was too embarrassed to tell her acquaintance why she wasn't going to keep the commode, she simply could have returned it and thanked her without a lengthy explanation. Throwing it out or giving it to someone else were not appropriate choices.
The acquaintance has a right to ask for a replacement. If my reader thought that a lower-priced commode might more closely match the one she borrowed, she might have offered an alternative to the $206 model. I'm not sure that quibbling about price would have been appropriate, however, given that she didn't bother to tell the acquaintance that she was giving away the commode.
My reader was not taken advantage of. She did indeed do a dumb thing in giving away something that wasn't hers. But by reimbursing her acquaintance for the item that she borrowed and gave away, she has now done the right thing.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
THE RIGHT THING: NO HAPPY RETURNS
I'm not what you would call an ardent shopper. OK, I'll be honest, I pretty much loathe shopping of any sort.
A letter from a reader in Huntington Beach, Calif., reminds me why. Apparently there is a gift shop in a mall outside Los Angeles that sells imported decorative items. Nothing in the shop is priced, however. If you like something, you have to ask a salesperson how much it costs.
That's what my reader did when she found an item that she liked. After being told that it cost $65, she told the clerk that she wanted to find her husband before purchasing it. Before she could leave, however, the salesman began lowering the price in $5 increments -- but only if she bought the item right then. She purchased it for $50.
"In the excitement of the purchase," she writes, "I did not notice the handwritten signs stating `No Returns,' and I did not see it printed on my receipt."
Alas, after the item had hung on her wall at home for a few days, her husband decided that it didn't go with their decor. It was only then, when she got out the receipt preparatory to returning the item, that she saw the notation that "All Sales Are Final."
She felt foolish, and let the matter lie for several weeks before she summoned up the courage to call the store. After she had explained her predicament, the saleswoman reiterated the store's policy, but told my reader that she could exchange the item for something of equal value.
"We did go in and look," she writes. "But we weren't in the mood just to get something. Besides, since nothing is priced, I wouldn't know how fair the exchange was."
My reader believes that she's entitled to a refund. Is the store ethically bound to give her one?
I think not. There are signs in the store announcing that all sales are final, a message that is also printed on receipts. There is nothing defective about the item. The store is nonetheless willing to let my reader exchange her item for something else. That strikes me as more than fair.
If my reader is suspicious that the salespeople will inflate prices so that her exchange choices are limited, she can send in her husband ahead of time to ask about the prices of various items. That way they'll have an idea of what $50 will buy them in the exchange.
Fundamentally, however, that has nothing to do with the question of whether she should get a refund. The store has a right to establish its own policies. The right thing for her to do is either to accept the offer of the exchange or to live with the purchase. That she neglected to pay attention to the signs or to the receipt is not the store's fault.
That said, the store's policy of not labeling items with their prices makes for an annoying shopping experience. That it's willing to drop those prices by almost 25 percent to stop a customer from leaving can't help but make customers wonder if they got the best price possible. And while printed signs and a notice on the receipt are clear, salespeople could make the "sales final" policy even clearer by stating it when the customer is checking out.
Of course, it may be that the salespeople avoid stating the policy for fear of scaring off customers. If so, that's no justification for not making every effort to ensure that customers know what they're entering into when they engage in business. The store's mysteriously sliding prices and seemingly flexible no-returns policy suggest that it has a way to go in building a trusting relationship with its customers.
But then, I'm no shopper.
A letter from a reader in Huntington Beach, Calif., reminds me why. Apparently there is a gift shop in a mall outside Los Angeles that sells imported decorative items. Nothing in the shop is priced, however. If you like something, you have to ask a salesperson how much it costs.
That's what my reader did when she found an item that she liked. After being told that it cost $65, she told the clerk that she wanted to find her husband before purchasing it. Before she could leave, however, the salesman began lowering the price in $5 increments -- but only if she bought the item right then. She purchased it for $50.
"In the excitement of the purchase," she writes, "I did not notice the handwritten signs stating `No Returns,' and I did not see it printed on my receipt."
Alas, after the item had hung on her wall at home for a few days, her husband decided that it didn't go with their decor. It was only then, when she got out the receipt preparatory to returning the item, that she saw the notation that "All Sales Are Final."
She felt foolish, and let the matter lie for several weeks before she summoned up the courage to call the store. After she had explained her predicament, the saleswoman reiterated the store's policy, but told my reader that she could exchange the item for something of equal value.
"We did go in and look," she writes. "But we weren't in the mood just to get something. Besides, since nothing is priced, I wouldn't know how fair the exchange was."
My reader believes that she's entitled to a refund. Is the store ethically bound to give her one?
I think not. There are signs in the store announcing that all sales are final, a message that is also printed on receipts. There is nothing defective about the item. The store is nonetheless willing to let my reader exchange her item for something else. That strikes me as more than fair.
If my reader is suspicious that the salespeople will inflate prices so that her exchange choices are limited, she can send in her husband ahead of time to ask about the prices of various items. That way they'll have an idea of what $50 will buy them in the exchange.
Fundamentally, however, that has nothing to do with the question of whether she should get a refund. The store has a right to establish its own policies. The right thing for her to do is either to accept the offer of the exchange or to live with the purchase. That she neglected to pay attention to the signs or to the receipt is not the store's fault.
That said, the store's policy of not labeling items with their prices makes for an annoying shopping experience. That it's willing to drop those prices by almost 25 percent to stop a customer from leaving can't help but make customers wonder if they got the best price possible. And while printed signs and a notice on the receipt are clear, salespeople could make the "sales final" policy even clearer by stating it when the customer is checking out.
Of course, it may be that the salespeople avoid stating the policy for fear of scaring off customers. If so, that's no justification for not making every effort to ensure that customers know what they're entering into when they engage in business. The store's mysteriously sliding prices and seemingly flexible no-returns policy suggest that it has a way to go in building a trusting relationship with its customers.
But then, I'm no shopper.
SOUND OFF: ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO AIR?
My readers were divided about whether they, like NBC, would have aired portions of the videos sent by Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer.
"I would have liked for them to not have shown them," writes Julie Clark of Cobbs Creek, Va. "In the tapes Cho states that he admired the Columbine killers. Hopefully no other young person will see this horrible footage and decide to emulate Cho."
D. Monroe of Yorba Linda, Calif. agrees: "Sick minds see this as glorification of a criminal, and it only prompts more sick minds to act out the same or worse vicious crimes." But Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C., would have aired the tape.
"The public had a right to know how warped this nut was," Seng writes. "Clearly NBC did the right thing." Check out other opinions at The Right Thing: SOUND OFF: STARING DOWN EVIL or post your own by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
"I would have liked for them to not have shown them," writes Julie Clark of Cobbs Creek, Va. "In the tapes Cho states that he admired the Columbine killers. Hopefully no other young person will see this horrible footage and decide to emulate Cho."
D. Monroe of Yorba Linda, Calif. agrees: "Sick minds see this as glorification of a criminal, and it only prompts more sick minds to act out the same or worse vicious crimes." But Charlie Seng of Lancaster, S.C., would have aired the tape.
"The public had a right to know how warped this nut was," Seng writes. "Clearly NBC did the right thing." Check out other opinions at The Right Thing: SOUND OFF: STARING DOWN EVIL or post your own by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of The Right Thing, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
SOUND OFF: A CONCESSION TO CONCESSION PRICES?
While reading an article on ABCNews.com about the ever-increasing cost of going to the movies, Debbie Rolland Billings of Corona, Calif., was taken aback by reader comments posted. Many readers wrote that they got around concession-stand prices by sneaking in their own treats from the outside, in clear violation of theater policies. While posters to ABCNews.com pointed out that theater snacks cost the theater only a fraction of what they charge for them, Billings noted that none of the readers acknowledged that theater owners foot hefty overhead costs including utilities, wages, workers-compensation insurance and liability insurance.
"These are all factors that go into the hefty price that consumers have to pay," she writes, "both at the box office and at the concession stand."
What do you think? Is it OK for movie-theater customers to bring their own snacks into movie theaters when the theaters prohibit them from doing so? Or are movie goers justified because of the high costs theater owners charge at concession stands?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them below by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment." Please include your name (first and last) and your hometown in your post. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
"These are all factors that go into the hefty price that consumers have to pay," she writes, "both at the box office and at the concession stand."
What do you think? Is it OK for movie-theater customers to bring their own snacks into movie theaters when the theaters prohibit them from doing so? Or are movie goers justified because of the high costs theater owners charge at concession stands?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them below by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment." Please include your name (first and last) and your hometown in your post. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
THE RIGHT THING: A DRUG ON THE MARKET?
For several years I've suffered from migraine headaches, for which I take a combination of prescription medications. While I'm relieved that my doctor has found a solution that's worked, I'm struck, each time I have to refill one of the three prescriptions I use, by how expensive the drugs are.
I'm not alone. Last year U.S. sales of prescription drugs reached $274.9 billion, according to IMS Health, a health-care-information company (IMS Reports U.S. Prescription Sales Jump 8.3 Percent in 2006, to $274.9 Billion ). In Canada, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the price tag was $21.1 billion. (Prescribed drug spending expected to surpass $21 billion in 2006.)
I'm fortunate to have health insurance that covers the bulk of the cost of my medicines, even though the amount I must pay as a co-payment increases regularly. Not everyone is as fortunate.
It's no wonder that consumers are looking for any break they can get on their prescription-drug costs.
Carla Hamilton of Orange County, Calif., believes that she's found a way to offset some of her prescription-drug costs by taking advantage of a promotion run regularly by drugstores in her area: If you bring a new or transferred prescription to their pharmacy, they'll give you an in-store gift card that ranges in value from $10 to $30, depending upon the promotion. Customers can take advantage of the offer only once, however, during any six-month period.
Since three different drugstore chains in Hamilton's area make the gift-card offer, she figures that she could rotate her prescriptions among the offering pharmacies at least six times during a 12-month period to take advantage of the promotion.
Hamilton knows that she can do this legally, without violating the restrictions on the promotion, but she wants to know if taking advantage of the promotion in this way would be ethically wrong.
The drugstores that run the gift-card promotions are obviously hoping to lure new customers away from their competitors. Ideally these customers would keep bringing their prescriptions to the pharmacy long after they had received and spent their gift cards. Making the gift cards usable only in that particular drugstore is another way of getting the customers into the store to "test drive" the store.
Hamilton's doubts may stem from a sense of loyalty to the drugstore that gave her something to switch to it, but the implied deal between her and the store extends no further than her receiving and using the gift card. The card is intended to get her to give the store a try, and that's what she does by using it. Thereafter she is free to stay or to go elsewhere as she wishes -- especially since the prescription drugs that she buys are exactly the same regardless of which pharmacy she patronizes.
The right thing for Hamilton to do is to comply with any restrictions that the drugstores have placed on their promotions. That's all she owes them.
There is nothing wrong in her taking full advantage of every gift-card offer she can find. If she can find a way to time her prescriptions so as to save $10 to $30 as often as six times a year, that's simply smart shopping. Even better would be if there were more drugstores in her area offering such deals, so that she could switch her prescriptions every month and offset even more of her prescription-drug costs.
I'm not alone. Last year U.S. sales of prescription drugs reached $274.9 billion, according to IMS Health, a health-care-information company (IMS Reports U.S. Prescription Sales Jump 8.3 Percent in 2006, to $274.9 Billion ). In Canada, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, the price tag was $21.1 billion. (Prescribed drug spending expected to surpass $21 billion in 2006.)
I'm fortunate to have health insurance that covers the bulk of the cost of my medicines, even though the amount I must pay as a co-payment increases regularly. Not everyone is as fortunate.
It's no wonder that consumers are looking for any break they can get on their prescription-drug costs.
Carla Hamilton of Orange County, Calif., believes that she's found a way to offset some of her prescription-drug costs by taking advantage of a promotion run regularly by drugstores in her area: If you bring a new or transferred prescription to their pharmacy, they'll give you an in-store gift card that ranges in value from $10 to $30, depending upon the promotion. Customers can take advantage of the offer only once, however, during any six-month period.
Since three different drugstore chains in Hamilton's area make the gift-card offer, she figures that she could rotate her prescriptions among the offering pharmacies at least six times during a 12-month period to take advantage of the promotion.
Hamilton knows that she can do this legally, without violating the restrictions on the promotion, but she wants to know if taking advantage of the promotion in this way would be ethically wrong.
The drugstores that run the gift-card promotions are obviously hoping to lure new customers away from their competitors. Ideally these customers would keep bringing their prescriptions to the pharmacy long after they had received and spent their gift cards. Making the gift cards usable only in that particular drugstore is another way of getting the customers into the store to "test drive" the store.
Hamilton's doubts may stem from a sense of loyalty to the drugstore that gave her something to switch to it, but the implied deal between her and the store extends no further than her receiving and using the gift card. The card is intended to get her to give the store a try, and that's what she does by using it. Thereafter she is free to stay or to go elsewhere as she wishes -- especially since the prescription drugs that she buys are exactly the same regardless of which pharmacy she patronizes.
The right thing for Hamilton to do is to comply with any restrictions that the drugstores have placed on their promotions. That's all she owes them.
There is nothing wrong in her taking full advantage of every gift-card offer she can find. If she can find a way to time her prescriptions so as to save $10 to $30 as often as six times a year, that's simply smart shopping. Even better would be if there were more drugstores in her area offering such deals, so that she could switch her prescriptions every month and offset even more of her prescription-drug costs.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
THE RIGHT THING: WHEN LOYALTY LOOSENS ITS GRIP
From childhood it's hammered into us that we shouldn't be tattletales, ratting out friends for every minor infraction. As adults we continue to prize loyalty to friends and colleagues, but we increasingly feel obliged to right the wrongs around us, even if doing so sometimes tests that loyalty. The tricky part is deciding when enough is enough, when loyalty must be set aside because we've got to speak up.
Loyalty is a virtue, of course, but taken to an extreme it can become a fault, leading us to a code of silence even when truly bad behavior is at issue. In the rap community, for example, the "Stop Snitchin"' campaign asks those who see violent crimes not to cooperate with law enforcement, leaving crimes unsolved. [In a segment on 60 Minutes on April 22, Anderson Cooper reported on the Stop Snitchin' movement. You can view his report at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2715238n.] That's hardly a new trend, needless to say: For decades various groups or neighborhoods have embraced silence rather than give up one of their own.
In the workplace, employees rarely discover wrongdoing that rises to the level of violent crime, but they still face a tough dilemma when trying to decide when it's time to set aside loyalty to company and colleagues in order to expose wrongdoing.
A reader who works for a large, far-flung company writes me that she has been sending information about her company to a media contact who is covering a class-action suit against her firm. The suit was brought against a division on the West Coast that is accused of mistreating employees by failing to pay minimum wage. My reader works for a division on the East Coast that, by her own account, treats its employees very well.
Because she finds it reprehensible that any division might not be paying minimum wage, she wrote to the reporter to correct some erroneous information in one of his articles. She has continued to provide him with information.
"I am giving only information that is true," she writes. "It is not secret, although it would not be easy for him to find out otherwise."
My reader has grown increasingly uneasy about helping him, however, as he adopts what she considers "a more attack-like posture toward the company."
She now wonders how she can judge whether to help him, and where her obligation to her own company may lie.
In part my reader has already made an ethical call, and made it correctly: The first time she contacted the reporter, she had already decided -- whether or not she had articulated that decision -- that, if her company wasn't treating its employees fairly, this reporter should have whatever information she could give him without violating company secrets. She has a greater obligation to her company and its employees than to the reporter, but her personal ethics are an even greater obligation. Trying to ensure that employees on the West Coast are paid fairly does nothing to violate the company's trust in her.
Even if she's breaking company policy by e-mailing a reporter, there is no ethical breach so long as her motives are to help right a wrong rather than any personal gain.
Her decision to do the right thing was not a one-shot, "make it and live with it" call, however. Her concern about the reporter's "attack-like posture" is legitimate, and if she concludes that he's now seeking to damage the company rather than to end illegal practices, she's under no obligation to continue supplying him with information.
She need not apologize for her past cooperation with the reporter, which was done under the best of motives. Ideally her actions will work to the benefit of those employees on the West Coast who weren't making minimum wage. But she's free to stop cooperating with him if, in her judgment, his current work is not consistent with that motivation.
Loyalty is a virtue, of course, but taken to an extreme it can become a fault, leading us to a code of silence even when truly bad behavior is at issue. In the rap community, for example, the "Stop Snitchin"' campaign asks those who see violent crimes not to cooperate with law enforcement, leaving crimes unsolved. [In a segment on 60 Minutes on April 22, Anderson Cooper reported on the Stop Snitchin' movement. You can view his report at http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2715238n.] That's hardly a new trend, needless to say: For decades various groups or neighborhoods have embraced silence rather than give up one of their own.
In the workplace, employees rarely discover wrongdoing that rises to the level of violent crime, but they still face a tough dilemma when trying to decide when it's time to set aside loyalty to company and colleagues in order to expose wrongdoing.
A reader who works for a large, far-flung company writes me that she has been sending information about her company to a media contact who is covering a class-action suit against her firm. The suit was brought against a division on the West Coast that is accused of mistreating employees by failing to pay minimum wage. My reader works for a division on the East Coast that, by her own account, treats its employees very well.
Because she finds it reprehensible that any division might not be paying minimum wage, she wrote to the reporter to correct some erroneous information in one of his articles. She has continued to provide him with information.
"I am giving only information that is true," she writes. "It is not secret, although it would not be easy for him to find out otherwise."
My reader has grown increasingly uneasy about helping him, however, as he adopts what she considers "a more attack-like posture toward the company."
She now wonders how she can judge whether to help him, and where her obligation to her own company may lie.
In part my reader has already made an ethical call, and made it correctly: The first time she contacted the reporter, she had already decided -- whether or not she had articulated that decision -- that, if her company wasn't treating its employees fairly, this reporter should have whatever information she could give him without violating company secrets. She has a greater obligation to her company and its employees than to the reporter, but her personal ethics are an even greater obligation. Trying to ensure that employees on the West Coast are paid fairly does nothing to violate the company's trust in her.
Even if she's breaking company policy by e-mailing a reporter, there is no ethical breach so long as her motives are to help right a wrong rather than any personal gain.
Her decision to do the right thing was not a one-shot, "make it and live with it" call, however. Her concern about the reporter's "attack-like posture" is legitimate, and if she concludes that he's now seeking to damage the company rather than to end illegal practices, she's under no obligation to continue supplying him with information.
She need not apologize for her past cooperation with the reporter, which was done under the best of motives. Ideally her actions will work to the benefit of those employees on the West Coast who weren't making minimum wage. But she's free to stop cooperating with him if, in her judgment, his current work is not consistent with that motivation.
SOUND OFF: PIZZA, PIZZA, PIZZA
In an ad in which a Pizza Hut delivery boy delivers three pizzas for $5 each, a young man relishes what he thinks is the delivery boy's mistake. I asked readers if they thought it was OK to send the message that taking advantage of a low-paid delivery boy should be celebrated, whether that message was inappropriate or whether it was simply a funny ad without any particular message.
The unanimous verdict from my readers is that the ad is not that funny. Many thought, however, that it would be a mistake to make too much out of its message.
The most positive spin on it came from Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C., who writes: "A good parent could seize the opportunity to say how cheating is a bad thing."
Like many other readers, Clutts also observes: "Older children and adults will just see the pizza-buyer as a simpleton."
Tilly Alldredge of Laguna Niguel, Calif., saw the ad and her blood boiled.
"I never order pizza," Alldredge writes, "but if I did, I'd go elsewhere."
Check out other opinions at http://jeffreyseglin.blogspot.com/2007/04/sound-off-slice-of-life.html or post your own by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below.
You can watch the commercial at Pizza Hut Commercial "Mistake" 3 for $5 with Erich Bergen.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
The unanimous verdict from my readers is that the ad is not that funny. Many thought, however, that it would be a mistake to make too much out of its message.
The most positive spin on it came from Phil Clutts of Harrisburg, N.C., who writes: "A good parent could seize the opportunity to say how cheating is a bad thing."
Like many other readers, Clutts also observes: "Older children and adults will just see the pizza-buyer as a simpleton."
Tilly Alldredge of Laguna Niguel, Calif., saw the ad and her blood boiled.
"I never order pizza," Alldredge writes, "but if I did, I'd go elsewhere."
Check out other opinions at http://jeffreyseglin.blogspot.com/2007/04/sound-off-slice-of-life.html or post your own by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below.
You can watch the commercial at Pizza Hut Commercial "Mistake" 3 for $5 with Erich Bergen.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
Friday, May 25, 2007
SJC Upholds Archdiocese Closing of Church on Donated Land
Back in June 2005, I posed the following question to readers of The Right Thing column:
In 1946, according to an article in The Boston Globe, the Maffei family of Wellesley, Mass., signed over eight acres of land to the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston so a new church could be built. Last October, the archdiocese closed the church. The family said it would sue the archdiocese to get back the land, now valued at $1.44 million.
The Maffei lawyers argue that the family was not fully informed that the church could possibly be closed and was therefore misled. The lawyers have said that the suit would be dropped if the diocese decided to reopen the church.
Regardless of how the courts might decide the case, do you believe the diocese has a responsibility to return the land to the family now that the church is being closed? Or is it fair for the diocese to do what it pleases with the land since it was a gift?
Here's how I reported some reader responses in a column later that summer:
My readers are split on whether the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston should return land donated by the Maffei family in 1946, now that it has closed the church on the land.
"In principle that gift was donated to the church," writes Bert Hoogendam of Sarnia, Ontario, "and from there on that property belongs to the church with no strings attached."
Innocent Udenkwo of Lagos, Nigeria, agrees: "A gift is a gift," he writes. "It is voluntary, without conditions, cannot be returned."
On the other hand, Elizabeth Stern of Lake Forest, Calif., disagrees.
"If the church is not going to stay on the land that was given to them, even after all of these years," she writes, "then they should give back the money/land to the Maffei family." "If the donation was made for a church, and only for a church," writes Veronica Ross of Garden Grove, Calif., "then yes, the church should return the land."
Finally, David Whitemyer of Boston takes a philosophical approach.
"They donated it," he writes. "They gave it away. It's not theirs anymore. The world changes. Bummer."
Today, Friday, May 25, 2007, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found in favor of the Archdiocese of Boston and said it was within its rights to sell the St. James the Great Church and its assets after it was closed. The case had previously been dismissed by a Suffolk Superior Court judge. The SJC ruling today upholds that judge's earlier ruling.
You can read two reports about today's ruling at Archdiocese can sell Wellesley church and SJC rules that archdiocese has authority to close church.
[Updated on Saturday, May 26, with link to SJC won't intervene in church closing, The Boston Globe's more detailed coverage of the ruling.]
In 1946, according to an article in The Boston Globe, the Maffei family of Wellesley, Mass., signed over eight acres of land to the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston so a new church could be built. Last October, the archdiocese closed the church. The family said it would sue the archdiocese to get back the land, now valued at $1.44 million.
The Maffei lawyers argue that the family was not fully informed that the church could possibly be closed and was therefore misled. The lawyers have said that the suit would be dropped if the diocese decided to reopen the church.
Regardless of how the courts might decide the case, do you believe the diocese has a responsibility to return the land to the family now that the church is being closed? Or is it fair for the diocese to do what it pleases with the land since it was a gift?
Here's how I reported some reader responses in a column later that summer:
My readers are split on whether the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston should return land donated by the Maffei family in 1946, now that it has closed the church on the land.
"In principle that gift was donated to the church," writes Bert Hoogendam of Sarnia, Ontario, "and from there on that property belongs to the church with no strings attached."
Innocent Udenkwo of Lagos, Nigeria, agrees: "A gift is a gift," he writes. "It is voluntary, without conditions, cannot be returned."
On the other hand, Elizabeth Stern of Lake Forest, Calif., disagrees.
"If the church is not going to stay on the land that was given to them, even after all of these years," she writes, "then they should give back the money/land to the Maffei family." "If the donation was made for a church, and only for a church," writes Veronica Ross of Garden Grove, Calif., "then yes, the church should return the land."
Finally, David Whitemyer of Boston takes a philosophical approach.
"They donated it," he writes. "They gave it away. It's not theirs anymore. The world changes. Bummer."
Today, Friday, May 25, 2007, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts found in favor of the Archdiocese of Boston and said it was within its rights to sell the St. James the Great Church and its assets after it was closed. The case had previously been dismissed by a Suffolk Superior Court judge. The SJC ruling today upholds that judge's earlier ruling.
You can read two reports about today's ruling at Archdiocese can sell Wellesley church and SJC rules that archdiocese has authority to close church.
[Updated on Saturday, May 26, with link to SJC won't intervene in church closing, The Boston Globe's more detailed coverage of the ruling.]
Thursday, May 24, 2007
H-P Reaches Settlement with SEC
Yesterday, Hewlett-Packard reached a settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission about the company's improper handling of the resignation of H-P's board member Thomas Perkins in May 2006. Perkins had quit when he learned about the methods H-P was using to uncover how leaks about the company were being made. In its filings with the SEC, H-P failed to mention the reasons Perkins had given for his departure.
Perkins later worked to get H-P to acknowledge why he had left. The situation led to the pretexting scandal erupting at H-P that led to Congressional hearings and the stepping down of former Board Chair Patricia Dunn.
No fine was levied in the SEC settled. H-P was not required to admit guilt. The company agreed not to exclude such information in the future.
The Associated Press report of the SEC sanctions is at HP settles charges over resignation.
You can read my earlier posts on the H-P pretexting scandal at The Right Thing: HEWLETT-PACKARD REDUX AND APPLE BACKDATING, The Right Thing: HEWLETT-PACKARD'S LEAKS, The Right Thing: MALDEN MILLS, HEWLETT PACKARD UPDATES, and The Right Thing: CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST H-P'S DUNN. And you can listen to an interview I did with NPR's "Here and Now" on the topic at Here and Now : Prosecutors Press Charges in Hewlett-Packard Case ....
There is still a federal criminal investigation into the H-P pretexting issue that continues.
Perkins later worked to get H-P to acknowledge why he had left. The situation led to the pretexting scandal erupting at H-P that led to Congressional hearings and the stepping down of former Board Chair Patricia Dunn.
No fine was levied in the SEC settled. H-P was not required to admit guilt. The company agreed not to exclude such information in the future.
The Associated Press report of the SEC sanctions is at HP settles charges over resignation.
You can read my earlier posts on the H-P pretexting scandal at The Right Thing: HEWLETT-PACKARD REDUX AND APPLE BACKDATING, The Right Thing: HEWLETT-PACKARD'S LEAKS, The Right Thing: MALDEN MILLS, HEWLETT PACKARD UPDATES, and The Right Thing: CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST H-P'S DUNN. And you can listen to an interview I did with NPR's "Here and Now" on the topic at Here and Now : Prosecutors Press Charges in Hewlett-Packard Case ....
There is still a federal criminal investigation into the H-P pretexting issue that continues.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
SOUND OFF: CASINOS TARGETING ASIAN CLIENTELE
Recent stories in the Associated Press (Casinos Winning Big by Betting on Asians) and The Boston Globe (Out of luck - The Boston Globe) have reported that casinos such as Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, both located in Connecticut, are aggressively marketing to the Asian community by offering inexpensive transportation, food and gambling coupons, along with traditional Asian gambling games. They also sponsor community activities and advertise in ethnic media. Experts in gambling addiction are concerned that targeting the Asian community so aggressively crosses a line and could be damaging the community.
Is it wrong for casinos to target one ethnic community so aggressively? Or is this simply smart marketing that seems to be working effectively? What do you think?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name (first and last) and your hometown in your post. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (The Right Thing Book from amazon.com ), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
Is it wrong for casinos to target one ethnic community so aggressively? Or is this simply smart marketing that seems to be working effectively? What do you think?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name (first and last) and your hometown in your post. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (The Right Thing Book from amazon.com ), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate, 500 Seventh Avenue, 8th floor, New York, NY 10018. Please remember to tell me who you are, where you're from, as well as where you read the column.
THE RIGHT THING: TRASH TALK
In the nine years I've been writing a column on ethics, I've all but given up trying to predict what topics will draw the most response from readers. A column questioning Vice President Cheney's claim that he has no financial ties to Halliburton failed to gain much traction (The Right Thing: When Executives Say They Don’t Have a Clue & THE RIGHT THING; With the Benefit of Hindsight, a Year-End Mea Culpa), while one about tapping into a neighbor's wireless Internet service continues to raise readers' hackles to this day (The Right Thing: SURFING ON BORROWED TIME).
But the column that drew by far the strongest response I've ever received was one that I wrote a couple of years ago about whether it was OK to let someone take recyclables from a bin set up at a Home Depot near Columbus, Ohio (The Right Thing: WHO'S STEALING MY TRASH? & The Right Thing: WHAT WAS I THINKING?). I argued that there was no harm and thus no foul from an ethical standpoint. Many readers chose to differ, arguing that the guy was robbing the community of funds used to pay for recycling efforts in the region.
So it is with some trepidation that I approach this week's topic: trash-- or, more precisely, trash disposal after a getaway to a family cabin.
Add to the mix that an adult son in his 40s would like me to settle a disagreement he has been having with his mother-in-law about the right thing to do, and you have the makings of a perfectly messy storm.
The situation is simple enough: Since no one wanted to share a four-hour car ride home to Mission Viejo, Calif., with a 13-gallon bag of trash, my reader's mother-in-law suggested that they dispose of the trash in the "public trash bin" outside the gas station in the little town where their family cabin is located.
My reader, Jeff E., told her that it would be ethically wrong to do so, unless permission were granted by the owner.
This led to a heated discussion of whether the bin was in fact public. Mother-in-law argued that people gassing up use it all the time to dispose of trash. Jeff E. sees a huge difference, however, between depositing an occasional fast-food wrapper and stuffing in all a household's accumulated trash from a long weekend.
"Therefore," he writes, "dumping one's household trash would essentially be stealing, since someone else is paying for the trash-bin service. Who's right?"
I'm not sure that dumping without permission equates to stealing, but otherwise Jeff E. is correct. It's wrong. If they want to dump their big bag of family trash in the gas-station trash bin, the right thing to do is to ask permission from the owner of the gas station.
Whether the trash bin is on private or public property should not make a difference in how they dispose of the trash. If there were a large trash barrel at the town center, they would be equally in the wrong to dump their household trash without first asking permission to make sure that they weren't violating any town ordinances, laws that very likely prohibit such dump-and-runs. Dumping laws vary from community to community and, no matter where you are, it's your obligation to make sure that you dispose of your trash in accordance with the law. Ignorance of the law, as they say, is no excuse.
In this particular battle, Jeff E. is right. And ultimately he did the right thing. After getting home, he got permission from the manager of the local town dump to dispose of the trash there. He attached the bag to his bicycle with bungee cords and rode the two miles to the dump to make his fully sanctioned drop-off.
Sometimes being right can be a lot of work.
But the column that drew by far the strongest response I've ever received was one that I wrote a couple of years ago about whether it was OK to let someone take recyclables from a bin set up at a Home Depot near Columbus, Ohio (The Right Thing: WHO'S STEALING MY TRASH? & The Right Thing: WHAT WAS I THINKING?). I argued that there was no harm and thus no foul from an ethical standpoint. Many readers chose to differ, arguing that the guy was robbing the community of funds used to pay for recycling efforts in the region.
So it is with some trepidation that I approach this week's topic: trash-- or, more precisely, trash disposal after a getaway to a family cabin.
Add to the mix that an adult son in his 40s would like me to settle a disagreement he has been having with his mother-in-law about the right thing to do, and you have the makings of a perfectly messy storm.
The situation is simple enough: Since no one wanted to share a four-hour car ride home to Mission Viejo, Calif., with a 13-gallon bag of trash, my reader's mother-in-law suggested that they dispose of the trash in the "public trash bin" outside the gas station in the little town where their family cabin is located.
My reader, Jeff E., told her that it would be ethically wrong to do so, unless permission were granted by the owner.
This led to a heated discussion of whether the bin was in fact public. Mother-in-law argued that people gassing up use it all the time to dispose of trash. Jeff E. sees a huge difference, however, between depositing an occasional fast-food wrapper and stuffing in all a household's accumulated trash from a long weekend.
"Therefore," he writes, "dumping one's household trash would essentially be stealing, since someone else is paying for the trash-bin service. Who's right?"
I'm not sure that dumping without permission equates to stealing, but otherwise Jeff E. is correct. It's wrong. If they want to dump their big bag of family trash in the gas-station trash bin, the right thing to do is to ask permission from the owner of the gas station.
Whether the trash bin is on private or public property should not make a difference in how they dispose of the trash. If there were a large trash barrel at the town center, they would be equally in the wrong to dump their household trash without first asking permission to make sure that they weren't violating any town ordinances, laws that very likely prohibit such dump-and-runs. Dumping laws vary from community to community and, no matter where you are, it's your obligation to make sure that you dispose of your trash in accordance with the law. Ignorance of the law, as they say, is no excuse.
In this particular battle, Jeff E. is right. And ultimately he did the right thing. After getting home, he got permission from the manager of the local town dump to dispose of the trash there. He attached the bag to his bicycle with bungee cords and rode the two miles to the dump to make his fully sanctioned drop-off.
Sometimes being right can be a lot of work.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
THE RIGHT THING: GETTING THE PICTURE
At a wedding reception in the Midwest, a slide show of the lives of the bride and the groom flashed on a screen, pleasing almost everyone. The one person not so happy was the professional photographer who was there to shoot the couple's wedding day.
"The very first picture to come up on the screen was a collage from my Web site of the couple's engagement pictures," she writes. "I couldn't believe it. I had not been asked for permission to use those images."
As the show ended the photographer watched as a guest placed a framed copy of a picture of the couple -- one of hers, again, scanned by the guest without permission -- onto the gift table, along with a copy of a CD containing the slide show.
The photographer has copyright information on her Web site, along with the statement that images are not intended for download. She even provides a link to the Web site of the United States Copyright Office. (She also links to copyright information on the Professional Photographers of America's website .) Still, she says, it's not uncommon for people to illegally copy her work.
Though incensed, the photographer decided not to do anything about it at the wedding. Why ruin the good will she had built with the wedding couple and their families?
As she was packing up, however, she noticed the photo-stealing guest's boyfriend sitting at the bar in the lobby. On her way out she approached him to ask for the guest's address, planning to contact the woman after the wedding. She figures that the photographs used would have cost about $225.
The boyfriend berated the photographer for making too big a deal, however, and other guests also began to yell at her. She asked how they would feel if someone interfered with the way they made a living, an argument that they refused to consider. She suggested that copying the pictures without permission and giving them as a gift was no different than taking a gift from Target and leaving without paying for it.
"I was the one being stolen from," she says, "yet I was the one being yelled at and I was the one who had to leave."
Obviously, the right thing would have been for the guest to have called to get permission to use the photos. No one should use copyrighted material of any kind without permission of the owner. Had she done so, the photographer says, she likely would have responded -- as she has in the past -- by letting her use the photos on the CD for free and charging her only $25 per print for any photos she wanted.
While the photographer was entirely justified in protecting her copyright, however, she wasn't wise to have approached the boyfriend at the bar. The boyfriend wasn't necessarily involved in the misuse, and the fact that alcohol was part of the mix should have tipped her off that it was not the best time to open this particular issue. The right thing would have been for her either to get the guest's name and address from the bride and groom after the wedding or to have asked the guest herself during the slide show.
As for the friend herself, given that the Web site was clearly marked as copyrighted material, there's only one right thing for her to do: Pay up.
Professional photographers make their livings by selling prints of their photographs and the rights to those shots. Using those photos without permission is wrong. Quality costs money and, with photography as with anything else, you get what you pay for. If professionally taken photographs are too expensive for your budget, that doesn't entitle you to steal them. Instead, turn to friends with good digital cameras and settle for whatever quality they can give you.
"The very first picture to come up on the screen was a collage from my Web site of the couple's engagement pictures," she writes. "I couldn't believe it. I had not been asked for permission to use those images."
As the show ended the photographer watched as a guest placed a framed copy of a picture of the couple -- one of hers, again, scanned by the guest without permission -- onto the gift table, along with a copy of a CD containing the slide show.
The photographer has copyright information on her Web site, along with the statement that images are not intended for download. She even provides a link to the Web site of the United States Copyright Office. (She also links to copyright information on the Professional Photographers of America's website .) Still, she says, it's not uncommon for people to illegally copy her work.
Though incensed, the photographer decided not to do anything about it at the wedding. Why ruin the good will she had built with the wedding couple and their families?
As she was packing up, however, she noticed the photo-stealing guest's boyfriend sitting at the bar in the lobby. On her way out she approached him to ask for the guest's address, planning to contact the woman after the wedding. She figures that the photographs used would have cost about $225.
The boyfriend berated the photographer for making too big a deal, however, and other guests also began to yell at her. She asked how they would feel if someone interfered with the way they made a living, an argument that they refused to consider. She suggested that copying the pictures without permission and giving them as a gift was no different than taking a gift from Target and leaving without paying for it.
"I was the one being stolen from," she says, "yet I was the one being yelled at and I was the one who had to leave."
Obviously, the right thing would have been for the guest to have called to get permission to use the photos. No one should use copyrighted material of any kind without permission of the owner. Had she done so, the photographer says, she likely would have responded -- as she has in the past -- by letting her use the photos on the CD for free and charging her only $25 per print for any photos she wanted.
While the photographer was entirely justified in protecting her copyright, however, she wasn't wise to have approached the boyfriend at the bar. The boyfriend wasn't necessarily involved in the misuse, and the fact that alcohol was part of the mix should have tipped her off that it was not the best time to open this particular issue. The right thing would have been for her either to get the guest's name and address from the bride and groom after the wedding or to have asked the guest herself during the slide show.
As for the friend herself, given that the Web site was clearly marked as copyrighted material, there's only one right thing for her to do: Pay up.
Professional photographers make their livings by selling prints of their photographs and the rights to those shots. Using those photos without permission is wrong. Quality costs money and, with photography as with anything else, you get what you pay for. If professionally taken photographs are too expensive for your budget, that doesn't entitle you to steal them. Instead, turn to friends with good digital cameras and settle for whatever quality they can give you.
SOUND OFF: FAKING CREDENTIALS
Since I asked my readers what they would do if they discovered that one of their employees had listed on his resume a degree that he hadn't really earned, the real world has caught up with me: Marilee Jones, dean of admissions at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was revealed to have claimed three degrees that she had not actually earned. MIT let her go, despite the fact that, by all accounts, she was very good at her job.
Here's what my readers would have done in a similar situation: "Liars can't be trusted in business," writes Wendy Hagmaier of Long Beach, Calif. "You should get rid of the offender."
Joe Read of Anaheim, Calif., wouldn't be so draconian. If the company's policy makes such deception grounds for dismissal, he writes, he would fire the employee. Otherwise, however, he would negotiate a lower salary that better reflects his actual credentials and work with the employee to help him get something of "even more worth: his degree and a greater appreciation of integrity."
"Honesty is a two-way street," writes Leslie Ray of Portland, Ore., who brings an unusual personal experience to the topic.
For years, Ray reports, her husband's relationship with various employers would sour after a few weeks. Finally one employer told him that he had "misrepresented himself." He discovered that companies checking his credentials didn't know that he had changed his name, and for that reason were unable to corroborate his military or educational history -- a situation that he quickly remedied.
Check out other opinions at SOUND OFF: FALSE CREDENTIALS, or post your own by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (The Right Thing book from amazon.com) is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," New York Times Syndicate, 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
Here's what my readers would have done in a similar situation: "Liars can't be trusted in business," writes Wendy Hagmaier of Long Beach, Calif. "You should get rid of the offender."
Joe Read of Anaheim, Calif., wouldn't be so draconian. If the company's policy makes such deception grounds for dismissal, he writes, he would fire the employee. Otherwise, however, he would negotiate a lower salary that better reflects his actual credentials and work with the employee to help him get something of "even more worth: his degree and a greater appreciation of integrity."
"Honesty is a two-way street," writes Leslie Ray of Portland, Ore., who brings an unusual personal experience to the topic.
For years, Ray reports, her husband's relationship with various employers would sour after a few weeks. Finally one employer told him that he had "misrepresented himself." He discovered that companies checking his credentials didn't know that he had changed his name, and for that reason were unable to corroborate his military or educational history -- a situation that he quickly remedied.
Check out other opinions at SOUND OFF: FALSE CREDENTIALS, or post your own by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (The Right Thing book from amazon.com) is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," New York Times Syndicate, 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
Reporters Avoiding Perceptions of Conflict
Last week, I spoke with Eric Deggans, the media critic for the St. Petersburg Times, about the departure of Tampa Tribune reporter Michael Fechter to go to work for Steve Emerson, the "anti-terrorism crusader" he has been covering for many years.
As Deggans notes in his op-ed piece in today's paper, When reporters switch sides, Fechter was the "first Tampa Bay area reporter to allege former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian had criminal links to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad." The move raises questions among Islamic groups whether Fechter's work had an anti-Islamic bias.
The larger question Deggans and I talked about was the propriety of a reporter going to work directly from his job as a reporter to work for a figure he covered so prominently. The Tampa Tribune found the move troubling enough to ask Emerson to not delay his departure once he announced he was taking the job. (In Reporter's departure 'controversial', Tampa Tribune reporter Meg Laughlin quotes Janet Coats, the paper's executive editor: "Steven Emerson is controversial. Michael Fechter is controversial. That Michael is going to work for Steven is controversial. To put separation between them and the paper, we asked Michael to leave today, rather than wait.")
I told Eric that the "real problem is the perception whether or not all along you were jockeying for the position. ...It's not just that you have to be careful not to do something. It's the perception that you're fighting."
We continued to discuss whether news outlets should encourage departing reporters to avoid working with or for people they cover for at least a year, although we talked about how flawed that system seems to be working with former U.S. Congressman who find loopholes around such restrictions on lobbying.
But I also noted that reporters may already be fighting an uphill battle when it comes to public perception. Many in the general public assume the worst about journalists already. I told Eric about a Gallup poll on public perception of the most honest professions that came out just as I was beginning a new career as a college professor at Emerson College in 1999. I continued at the time to write a monthly version of my Right Thing ethics column for the Sunday New York Times Money & Business section. As my wife was double-parked outside my Emerson office building so I could unload some boxes, NPR reported that among the top 10 respected professions in the Gallup poll was college professors. Before I could feel too glib, it went on to report that among the bottom 10 was online journalists. Talk about a disconnect.
I was the same person regardless of whether I was in the classroom or on the pages or website of a newspaper, but apparently the public's perception of me changed depending on what they thought I did for a living. I wrote a column about it (The Right Thing: TELLING THE TRUTH, OR AT LEAST MOST OF IT) and wondered out loud to my wife how I'd introduce myself at cocktail parties if someone asked me what I did for a living. After pointing out that we didn't go to all that many cocktail parties, she wisely pointed out that the best course was full disclosure, but it didn't change the fact that the public's perception of journalists is not all that high, whether that perception is warranted or not.
Cases like Fechter's as Eric points out in his op-ed piece today raise some challenging questions for journalists. Sadly, they also give credence to what a large portion of the public believes about the profession and force the rest of us to examine how we would respond were we in Fechter's shoes.
As Deggans notes in his op-ed piece in today's paper, When reporters switch sides, Fechter was the "first Tampa Bay area reporter to allege former University of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian had criminal links to the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad." The move raises questions among Islamic groups whether Fechter's work had an anti-Islamic bias.
The larger question Deggans and I talked about was the propriety of a reporter going to work directly from his job as a reporter to work for a figure he covered so prominently. The Tampa Tribune found the move troubling enough to ask Emerson to not delay his departure once he announced he was taking the job. (In Reporter's departure 'controversial', Tampa Tribune reporter Meg Laughlin quotes Janet Coats, the paper's executive editor: "Steven Emerson is controversial. Michael Fechter is controversial. That Michael is going to work for Steven is controversial. To put separation between them and the paper, we asked Michael to leave today, rather than wait.")
I told Eric that the "real problem is the perception whether or not all along you were jockeying for the position. ...It's not just that you have to be careful not to do something. It's the perception that you're fighting."
We continued to discuss whether news outlets should encourage departing reporters to avoid working with or for people they cover for at least a year, although we talked about how flawed that system seems to be working with former U.S. Congressman who find loopholes around such restrictions on lobbying.
But I also noted that reporters may already be fighting an uphill battle when it comes to public perception. Many in the general public assume the worst about journalists already. I told Eric about a Gallup poll on public perception of the most honest professions that came out just as I was beginning a new career as a college professor at Emerson College in 1999. I continued at the time to write a monthly version of my Right Thing ethics column for the Sunday New York Times Money & Business section. As my wife was double-parked outside my Emerson office building so I could unload some boxes, NPR reported that among the top 10 respected professions in the Gallup poll was college professors. Before I could feel too glib, it went on to report that among the bottom 10 was online journalists. Talk about a disconnect.
I was the same person regardless of whether I was in the classroom or on the pages or website of a newspaper, but apparently the public's perception of me changed depending on what they thought I did for a living. I wrote a column about it (The Right Thing: TELLING THE TRUTH, OR AT LEAST MOST OF IT) and wondered out loud to my wife how I'd introduce myself at cocktail parties if someone asked me what I did for a living. After pointing out that we didn't go to all that many cocktail parties, she wisely pointed out that the best course was full disclosure, but it didn't change the fact that the public's perception of journalists is not all that high, whether that perception is warranted or not.
Cases like Fechter's as Eric points out in his op-ed piece today raise some challenging questions for journalists. Sadly, they also give credence to what a large portion of the public believes about the profession and force the rest of us to examine how we would respond were we in Fechter's shoes.
Sunday, May 06, 2007
SOUND OFF: STARING DOWN EVIL
After the tragedy of the Virginia Tech shootings, NBC was faced with a difficult decision. It had received a package from the killer that included video clips of him talking into the camera about the vicious rampage upon which he was about to embark, one which resulted in the deaths of 32 people. After notifying the FBI and turning over copies of the material, NBC decided to air portions of the video. Some felt that the footage was newsworthy and appropriate for airing. Others took NBC to task for giving over airtime to the killer.
If faced with the same situation, what would you do? Air the video? Withhold the information from the public? Post the information only on the NBC News Web site, so that viewers could choose whether or not to view it? Or something else?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name and your hometown. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (The Right Thing Book from amazon.com), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate , 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
If faced with the same situation, what would you do? Air the video? Withhold the information from the public? Post the information only on the NBC News Web site, so that viewers could choose whether or not to view it? Or something else?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name and your hometown. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (The Right Thing Book from amazon.com), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," The New York Times Syndicate , 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
THE RIGHT THING: TAKE MY MONEY, PLEASE
Like many of her neighbors in Laguna Woods, Calif., Karen M. enjoys buying stuff. Easy enough.
What's not so easy is what happens when something goes wrong with an order and Karen wants to make things right. I'm not talking about when a company owes Karen money. Her problem is the opposite: On several occasions Karen has not been charged for an order received and has found it near impossible to pay up.
How far should she have to go in trying to correct a company's mistake in her favor?
Take the bathing suit Karen ordered online. When the suit didn't arrive, she called and, after navigating her way through the telephone menu, finally reached an operator. The operator told her that the suit was out of stock, so the company would credit her credit card. Two days later, however, Karen received the suit. She called, navigated the telephone menu again, told the operator she had gotten the suit and asked to be rebilled.
When her credit-card statement arrived, the credit was shown, but not the rebilling. Karen called again, marched through the telephone menu again and spoke to yet another operator. She still hasn't been charged.
Or take the pharmacy where she gets her prescriptions. After she orders a prescription refill online, the pharmacy sends her an e-mail when it's ready and then charges her credit card. But recently, after waiting seven days and receiving no e-mail, she called the pharmacy, navigated its menu and spoke to an operator. She ended up with a double prescription for which she was never charged. She called, but still hasn't been charged.
Or how about when she bought gift wrap that her grandson was selling to raise money for his school? She ordered two rolls. The company sent her three. She e-mailed the company saying that she'd send back the extra roll if it would pay shipping, but was told to keep the extra roll. The next day she received two more rolls. That makes three rolls, so far, for none of which she has been charged.
Karen is an honest woman who, quite rightly, believes that she should pay for the stuff she buys. Nevertheless, getting these companies to charge her has turned into a part-time job.
"If I call once to advise the company that they have made a mistake in my favor," she asks, "is that one call enough? Or do I have to keep making calls, as long as it takes, until they get it right?"
The right thing for Karen to do is exactly what she had been doing: trying to correct the mistake by contacting the companies to tell them of their errors. All the same, she's not obligated to spend hours on the telephone begging companies to take the money she owes them. One call is sufficient for that purpose and, if I were her, that's where I'd leave things.
She could go a step further, however, by placing a check in the mail, along with a copy of the packing slip and an explanatory note, leaving the company to figure out how to clean up its billing mess. This might result in Karen having to deal with uncashed checks when balancing her checkbook, of course, but it would save her from treacherous telephone menus and allow her to rest easy knowing that she had gone out of her way to do what was right, even when these companies couldn't figure out what they were doing wrong.
What's not so easy is what happens when something goes wrong with an order and Karen wants to make things right. I'm not talking about when a company owes Karen money. Her problem is the opposite: On several occasions Karen has not been charged for an order received and has found it near impossible to pay up.
How far should she have to go in trying to correct a company's mistake in her favor?
Take the bathing suit Karen ordered online. When the suit didn't arrive, she called and, after navigating her way through the telephone menu, finally reached an operator. The operator told her that the suit was out of stock, so the company would credit her credit card. Two days later, however, Karen received the suit. She called, navigated the telephone menu again, told the operator she had gotten the suit and asked to be rebilled.
When her credit-card statement arrived, the credit was shown, but not the rebilling. Karen called again, marched through the telephone menu again and spoke to yet another operator. She still hasn't been charged.
Or take the pharmacy where she gets her prescriptions. After she orders a prescription refill online, the pharmacy sends her an e-mail when it's ready and then charges her credit card. But recently, after waiting seven days and receiving no e-mail, she called the pharmacy, navigated its menu and spoke to an operator. She ended up with a double prescription for which she was never charged. She called, but still hasn't been charged.
Or how about when she bought gift wrap that her grandson was selling to raise money for his school? She ordered two rolls. The company sent her three. She e-mailed the company saying that she'd send back the extra roll if it would pay shipping, but was told to keep the extra roll. The next day she received two more rolls. That makes three rolls, so far, for none of which she has been charged.
Karen is an honest woman who, quite rightly, believes that she should pay for the stuff she buys. Nevertheless, getting these companies to charge her has turned into a part-time job.
"If I call once to advise the company that they have made a mistake in my favor," she asks, "is that one call enough? Or do I have to keep making calls, as long as it takes, until they get it right?"
The right thing for Karen to do is exactly what she had been doing: trying to correct the mistake by contacting the companies to tell them of their errors. All the same, she's not obligated to spend hours on the telephone begging companies to take the money she owes them. One call is sufficient for that purpose and, if I were her, that's where I'd leave things.
She could go a step further, however, by placing a check in the mail, along with a copy of the packing slip and an explanatory note, leaving the company to figure out how to clean up its billing mess. This might result in Karen having to deal with uncashed checks when balancing her checkbook, of course, but it would save her from treacherous telephone menus and allow her to rest easy knowing that she had gone out of her way to do what was right, even when these companies couldn't figure out what they were doing wrong.
Friday, May 04, 2007
HYPERTEXT ADS WITHIN ONLINE EDIT CAUSE CONFUSION
In a post on his blog, Paul Conley takes Ziff Davis to task for allowing the use of Intellitxt inside of its online editorial stories. (See Ziff Davis crosses the ethics line again.) This allows users to click on hypertext that takes them directly to advertisements that are associated with the hypertext-ed words.
Forbes.com tried a similar experiment in 2004 but stopped it after its editors complained (See Forbes.com Nixes Ad Links in Editorial.)
Conley writes that was Ziff Davis is doing goes against ASBPE ethics guidelines. (See American Society of Business Publication Editors Code of Preferred ...)
Conley's post touched off a discussion that includes some in the industry agreeing with him and some disagreeing. The dust-up is detailed in a piece released yesterday by Folio: magazine's Alert newsletter. (See Ziff Davis Caught in Bloggers' Crosshairs.) I'm cited in the piece as stating, among other things, that the practice is bound to cause confusion.
The official statement of ASBPE from its president, Roy Harris, is included at the end of the Folio: article.
Forbes.com tried a similar experiment in 2004 but stopped it after its editors complained (See Forbes.com Nixes Ad Links in Editorial.)
Conley writes that was Ziff Davis is doing goes against ASBPE ethics guidelines. (See American Society of Business Publication Editors Code of Preferred ...)
Conley's post touched off a discussion that includes some in the industry agreeing with him and some disagreeing. The dust-up is detailed in a piece released yesterday by Folio: magazine's Alert newsletter. (See Ziff Davis Caught in Bloggers' Crosshairs.) I'm cited in the piece as stating, among other things, that the practice is bound to cause confusion.
The official statement of ASBPE from its president, Roy Harris, is included at the end of the Folio: article.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
When Is Enough Enough?
In a story on ABCNews.com today (Tenet Lessons, Less Pay, More Frustration: Why It's the Choice for Some), Laura Marquez writes about for CIA Director George Tenet's decision to leave his post and asks the question:
"So what causes someone who dedicates his life to public service to sever those ties, and as in Tenet's case, become an outspoken critic of the government he once served? Tenet is certainly not the first public servant to become disillusioned with his job."
Marquez cites me in the article and happened to call a few days after I'd returned from a seminar at The Arden Institute in Lenox, Massachusetts (http://www.shakespeare.org/arden/participating.php). As part of a seminar called "Leadership in a Time of Crisis" (http://www.shakespeare.org/arden/crisis.php), we read the resignation of former diplomat John Brady Kiesling (John Brady Kiesling Home) who, after serving 20 years with the State Department, resigned in a letter that was widely circulated on the Internet after he wrote it to Colin Powell in 2003, which was the first time I had seen the letter.
In part Kiesling writes: "Until this Administration, it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my President I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer."
You can find Kiesling's resignation letter at John Brady Kiesling Home.
Information on the Arden Seminars is at http://www.shakespeare.org/arden/crisis.php.
And Marquez's article on ABCNews.com is at Tenet Lessons, Less Pay, More Frustration: Why It's the Choice for Some.
"So what causes someone who dedicates his life to public service to sever those ties, and as in Tenet's case, become an outspoken critic of the government he once served? Tenet is certainly not the first public servant to become disillusioned with his job."
Marquez cites me in the article and happened to call a few days after I'd returned from a seminar at The Arden Institute in Lenox, Massachusetts (http://www.shakespeare.org/arden/participating.php). As part of a seminar called "Leadership in a Time of Crisis" (http://www.shakespeare.org/arden/crisis.php), we read the resignation of former diplomat John Brady Kiesling (John Brady Kiesling Home) who, after serving 20 years with the State Department, resigned in a letter that was widely circulated on the Internet after he wrote it to Colin Powell in 2003, which was the first time I had seen the letter.
In part Kiesling writes: "Until this Administration, it had been possible to believe that by upholding the policies of my President I was also upholding the interests of the American people and the world. I believe it no longer."
You can find Kiesling's resignation letter at John Brady Kiesling Home.
Information on the Arden Seminars is at http://www.shakespeare.org/arden/crisis.php.
And Marquez's article on ABCNews.com is at Tenet Lessons, Less Pay, More Frustration: Why It's the Choice for Some.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Fewer Women in the Boardroom
Judy Dobryzynski has an op-ed piece in today's Boston Globe (Women in the boardroom) that gives a Boston spin on the Catalyst study that shows that the number of women in top positions in Fortune 500 companies has shrunk since the last census was taken as has the number of companies that have one woman on their corporate board.
Dobrzynski wrote similar pieces with local angles for the Los Angeles Times (Return of the 'glass ceiling') and the Chicago Tribune (Female CEOs still rare sight).
Her commentary is based on recent census data mined by Catalyst. A report on that data can be found at Catalyst Releases 2006 Census of Women in Fortune 500 Corporate Officer and Board Positions.
I first reported on her pieces in the blog and included a related Right Thing column I'd written in March 2002 at The Right Thing: How to Get a Company's Attention on Women's Pay.
Dobrzynski wrote similar pieces with local angles for the Los Angeles Times (Return of the 'glass ceiling') and the Chicago Tribune (Female CEOs still rare sight).
Her commentary is based on recent census data mined by Catalyst. A report on that data can be found at Catalyst Releases 2006 Census of Women in Fortune 500 Corporate Officer and Board Positions.
I first reported on her pieces in the blog and included a related Right Thing column I'd written in March 2002 at The Right Thing: How to Get a Company's Attention on Women's Pay.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
LOVE ON THE JOB
Given how much time people spend at work, it's no wonder that workplace romances erupt on a regular basis. The challenge for anyone trying to maintain a relationship with a co-worker, however, is how to do so without letting it interfere with either employee's work.
With the real or perceived fear of sexual-harassment lawsuits, you'd think that most companies would have thought through how to handle workplace relationships. They haven't. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 72 percent of the companies surveyed in its most recent annual poll on workplace romance had no policy covering such relationships.
At most companies, in short, employees are on their own when it comes to navigating the often-choppy waters of romance with a co-worker.
When a manager dates a subordinate, the situation is even more complicated -- complicated enough that it's reasonable to wonder if it's ever OK to date someone when you have power over that person's job security.
A reader from Manhattan writes to tell me that she is romantically involved with her boss -- who, of course, is the one who praises her to upper management and will be recommending her for promotion.
She's confident that she deserves such praise and support, being "smart, capable, competent, responsible and inherently good at what I do," but she wonders how her relationship with her superior redefines her role in the workplace. Since the relationship began, she says, they are more prone to argument and spend more time together, both at and outside of their workplace.
Her company has no written policy against relationships, but nevertheless she's worried about crossing those ethical boundaries at work.
"How can you ever recover," she asks, "once you've headed down that road?"
Except in unusual circumstances, company executives have no business telling people with whom they should or shouldn't fall in love. But I do believe that they have a responsibility to make sure that romances between employees don't have an adverse affect on the company or on its other employees. If there's a relationship between a manager and a subordinate, it's critical for someone else at the company to be informed of that fact, to make sure that the relationship is consensual and that the manager isn't using his or her position inappropriately.
The right thing to do, in short, is for anyone involved in such a relationship to make it known, at least to some extent. So long as only the participants know of the relationship, the possibility for inappropriate effects is always present.
In this case, the couple should have talked to someone at the company about their relationship before it went very far. Since her manager has power over her career, it was his responsibility to talk to his manager or to someone in human resources. In a perfect world they would have received good advice on how to proceed, and in particular how to keep their private lives separate from the company's business. One possible result, for example, might have been my reader's being reassigned to a different manager.
But this isn't a perfect world. As it happens, the manager also has a live-in girlfriend who doesn't know about the affair. He has no plans to leave his girlfriend -- though he assures my reader that she is the only one with whom he is cheating on his partner -- so, under the circumstances, he's unwilling to disclose their relationship to any third party.
The circumstances make clear that the manager is an unethical manipulator who can't be expected to do the right thing. That leaves it up to my reader, who should see his inability to respond appropriately to this question as a warning flare signaling her to detour off this particular road as quickly as possible.
With the real or perceived fear of sexual-harassment lawsuits, you'd think that most companies would have thought through how to handle workplace relationships. They haven't. According to the Society for Human Resource Management, 72 percent of the companies surveyed in its most recent annual poll on workplace romance had no policy covering such relationships.
At most companies, in short, employees are on their own when it comes to navigating the often-choppy waters of romance with a co-worker.
When a manager dates a subordinate, the situation is even more complicated -- complicated enough that it's reasonable to wonder if it's ever OK to date someone when you have power over that person's job security.
A reader from Manhattan writes to tell me that she is romantically involved with her boss -- who, of course, is the one who praises her to upper management and will be recommending her for promotion.
She's confident that she deserves such praise and support, being "smart, capable, competent, responsible and inherently good at what I do," but she wonders how her relationship with her superior redefines her role in the workplace. Since the relationship began, she says, they are more prone to argument and spend more time together, both at and outside of their workplace.
Her company has no written policy against relationships, but nevertheless she's worried about crossing those ethical boundaries at work.
"How can you ever recover," she asks, "once you've headed down that road?"
Except in unusual circumstances, company executives have no business telling people with whom they should or shouldn't fall in love. But I do believe that they have a responsibility to make sure that romances between employees don't have an adverse affect on the company or on its other employees. If there's a relationship between a manager and a subordinate, it's critical for someone else at the company to be informed of that fact, to make sure that the relationship is consensual and that the manager isn't using his or her position inappropriately.
The right thing to do, in short, is for anyone involved in such a relationship to make it known, at least to some extent. So long as only the participants know of the relationship, the possibility for inappropriate effects is always present.
In this case, the couple should have talked to someone at the company about their relationship before it went very far. Since her manager has power over her career, it was his responsibility to talk to his manager or to someone in human resources. In a perfect world they would have received good advice on how to proceed, and in particular how to keep their private lives separate from the company's business. One possible result, for example, might have been my reader's being reassigned to a different manager.
But this isn't a perfect world. As it happens, the manager also has a live-in girlfriend who doesn't know about the affair. He has no plans to leave his girlfriend -- though he assures my reader that she is the only one with whom he is cheating on his partner -- so, under the circumstances, he's unwilling to disclose their relationship to any third party.
The circumstances make clear that the manager is an unethical manipulator who can't be expected to do the right thing. That leaves it up to my reader, who should see his inability to respond appropriately to this question as a warning flare signaling her to detour off this particular road as quickly as possible.
SOUND OFF: BOSS'S BONUS MISTAKE
All the readers who responded said that they would let their bosses know if they received a larger bonus than they'd been led to believe they'd be getting.
"The resolution is identical whether the bonus is too big or too small," writes Mary Jan Rosenak of Madison, Wisc. "You thank your boss for the generous bonus, even better than you expected. You thank your boss for the generous bonus, but less than you expected."
Another reader who asked not to be named would e-mail the boss to thank him for the bonus. As a result, she writes, it's much more likely that he'd reply by saying "I'm glad I could reward you even more than originally promised. Keep up the good work."
Without question you should tell your boss what happened, writes Jan Bohren of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
"Three things are possible," he continues. "Your boss decided to increase your bonus and neglected to tell you. A mistake has been made. This is a test."
Regardless of the reason, Bohren writes, the right thing is to let the boss know.
Check out other opinions or post your own by clicking on "post a comment" or "comments" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," New York Times Syndicate, 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
"The resolution is identical whether the bonus is too big or too small," writes Mary Jan Rosenak of Madison, Wisc. "You thank your boss for the generous bonus, even better than you expected. You thank your boss for the generous bonus, but less than you expected."
Another reader who asked not to be named would e-mail the boss to thank him for the bonus. As a result, she writes, it's much more likely that he'd reply by saying "I'm glad I could reward you even more than originally promised. Keep up the good work."
Without question you should tell your boss what happened, writes Jan Bohren of Dobbs Ferry, N.Y.
"Three things are possible," he continues. "Your boss decided to increase your bonus and neglected to tell you. A mistake has been made. This is a test."
Regardless of the reason, Bohren writes, the right thing is to let the boss know.
Check out other opinions or post your own by clicking on "post a comment" or "comments" below.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," New York Times Syndicate, 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Just Saying No to Gifts From Drug Makers
In August 2002, I wrote a Right Thing column for the Sunday New York Times about doctors taking gifts from drug manufacturers in spite of American Medical Association guidelines (AMA (Gifts to Phys CME) Ethical opinions and guidelines) that prohibited the practice.
In an article released today by The New England Journal of Medicine (Physician–Industry Relationships ), it looks as if things haven't changed all that much. In a national survey of 3,167 physicians, the authors report that 94 percent reported receiving gifts of some kind.
You can read The New England Journal of Medicine article at Physician–Industry Relationships .
You can purchase my August 2002 article from The New York Times archives at THE RIGHT THING; Just Saying No to Gifts From Drug Makers. (If you are a college student or professor with an .edu address, you should be able to access this as well as other Times-Select articles for free.)
Joe Fahy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote about the NEJM findings this morning at Most doctors still take gifts from drug, device firms. And Denise Gellene wrote about it in the Los Angeles Times at Doctor freebies common, study says.
In an article released today by The New England Journal of Medicine (Physician–Industry Relationships ), it looks as if things haven't changed all that much. In a national survey of 3,167 physicians, the authors report that 94 percent reported receiving gifts of some kind.
- 83% received food in the workplace
- 78% received drug samples
- 35% received reimbursement for costs associated with professional meetings or continuing medical education
- 28% received payments for consulting, giving lectures, or enrolling patients in trials
- 7% received tickets to cultural or sporting events
You can read The New England Journal of Medicine article at Physician–Industry Relationships .
You can purchase my August 2002 article from The New York Times archives at THE RIGHT THING; Just Saying No to Gifts From Drug Makers. (If you are a college student or professor with an .edu address, you should be able to access this as well as other Times-Select articles for free.)
Joe Fahy of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette wrote about the NEJM findings this morning at Most doctors still take gifts from drug, device firms. And Denise Gellene wrote about it in the Los Angeles Times at Doctor freebies common, study says.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Ethics in America II
In the late 1980s, PBS aired a series called Ethics in America that was developed by Fred Friendly (www.fredfriendly.org). It is a 10-part series that looked at ethics in the media, government, medicine, law, business, military, and other aspects of life. It drew together distinguished panelists who were asked to respond to hypothetical cases posed to them throughout the series. After Fred Friendly's death in 1998, his company, Fred Friendly Seminars continued to produce programming.
Last year, Fred Friendly Seminars began production of an Ethics in America II series. The series is complete and will air later this year on PBS. In the meantime, you can view the various segments for free at http://www.learner.org/series/ethics2. That site also has links to pdfs of discussion guides and an online source reader.
The business ethics show, “Risk, Reward, and Responsibility: Ethics in Business,” is at http://www.learner.org/series/ethics2/risk_reward/.
Last year, Fred Friendly Seminars began production of an Ethics in America II series. The series is complete and will air later this year on PBS. In the meantime, you can view the various segments for free at http://www.learner.org/series/ethics2. That site also has links to pdfs of discussion guides and an online source reader.
The business ethics show, “Risk, Reward, and Responsibility: Ethics in Business,” is at http://www.learner.org/series/ethics2/risk_reward/.
Sunday, April 22, 2007
SOUND OFF: A SLICE OF LIFE
I've received several comments about a television commercial for Pizza Hut that offers three pizzas for $5 each. Here's how it goes: A delivery boy comes to a door to deliver the pizza, and a young man answers.
"That's only 5 bucks each, right?" he asks.
"Yes sir," the delivery boy answers.
The man runs inside and shouts. "Oh yeah! Honey, the Pizza Hut kid made the same mistake again! I got three medium Pizza Hut pizzas for the same price as those other guys!"
A reader in Laguna, Calif., writes that it makes her blood boil every time she sees this ad.
"He is so happy about the `mistake,"' she writes, "and is perfectly willing to let the pizza deliverer make up any difference."
My reader wants to know if she's being too picky. Is it OK that the man rejoices at the expense of the delivery boy? Is it OK for the advertiser to send the message that taking advantage of low-paid delivery boys should be celebrated? Or is it nothing more than a funny ad?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, your hometown as well as where you read the Sound Off question. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
You can watch the commercial at Pizza Hut Commercial "Mistake" 3 for $5 with Erich Bergen.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," New York Times Syndicate, 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
"That's only 5 bucks each, right?" he asks.
"Yes sir," the delivery boy answers.
The man runs inside and shouts. "Oh yeah! Honey, the Pizza Hut kid made the same mistake again! I got three medium Pizza Hut pizzas for the same price as those other guys!"
A reader in Laguna, Calif., writes that it makes her blood boil every time she sees this ad.
"He is so happy about the `mistake,"' she writes, "and is perfectly willing to let the pizza deliverer make up any difference."
My reader wants to know if she's being too picky. Is it OK that the man rejoices at the expense of the delivery boy? Is it OK for the advertiser to send the message that taking advantage of low-paid delivery boys should be celebrated? Or is it nothing more than a funny ad?
Send your thoughts to rightthing@nytimes.com or post them here by clicking on "comments" or "post a comment" below. Please include your name, your hometown as well as where you read the Sound Off question. Readers' comments may appear in an upcoming column.
You can watch the commercial at Pizza Hut Commercial "Mistake" 3 for $5 with Erich Bergen.
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of "The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business" (Smith Kerr, 2006), is an associate professor at Emerson College in Boston, where he teaches writing and ethics. He is also the administrator of http://www.jeffreyseglin.com, a Web log focused on ethical issues.
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@nytimes.com or to "The Right Thing," New York Times Syndicate, 609 Greenwich St., 6th floor, New York, N.Y. 10014-3610.
THE BOTTOMLESS LIST
You work for the training-and-development department of a midsized company in the Midwest. You're not crazy about a particular vendor's software product that you use to help manage your company's training procedures.
Then one day you get an e-mail from a survey company, asking you to complete a confidential online satisfaction survey about your vendor's software product. You're told that customers of your vendor's competitors are being surveyed as well, and that a list of customer-satisfaction rankings will be published.
Bingo! Payback time! Now you can let your honest reactions surge forth. Your bosses will see how poorly your current vendor's product stacks up against the other software on the market and, quicker than you can say "flush my cache," they'll be dumping the old vendor.
That's exactly what happened to my reader C.P. The trouble was, her bosses never got to see how poorly their current software vendor did because, when the results were published a few months later, that vendor didn't show up in the rankings.
C.P. called the survey company to find out what was going on. The company told her that the vendor in question had chosen not to participate after seeing the survey results -- in other words, C.P. surmises, her vendor didn't want to see its name at the bottom of the published list.
"How valid is a survey if those ranked at the bottom can choose to bail out?" C.P. asks. "How fair is it to the vendor's customers, who took the time to respond, to not see the final results?"
Part of C.P.'s anger stems from righteous indignation at being misled into seeing this survey as an opportunity to prove to others -- and particularly to her bosses -- that her company's current software vendor isn't cutting it. And of course the survey company isn't in business to give C.P. and, presumably, other dissatisfied customers ammunition for their dissatisfaction, and is under no legal obligation to publish the full results.
Nonetheless, I understand C.P.'s resentment. Allowing poorly ranked companies to remove themselves from the published list may not affect the validity of the results that are published, since the companies who fared better did so by pleasing customers who responded to the survey. But dropping the names of companies that didn't perform well suggests that this survey will never be exhaustive enough to be truly useful for customers looking to compare software vendors. If the survey company allows drop-outs, after all, why would any company that didn't finish at the top in the rankings allow itself to appear in print?
Such limited surveys may well be useful to some companies, such as those that end up at the top of the list and want to use those findings to promote themselves. However, it's not fair for the survey company to give respondents the impression that they're participating in one type of survey when in fact they're participating in another. People put their time into responding out of certain expectations, and might not want to participate if their expectations were different.
The right thing for the survey company to do, in order to be fair to all involved, is to prominently place clear and detailed information about who is paying for the survey, whether and when companies have the ability to opt out, and exactly what information the survey taker will be able to see.
But that's not what happened. C.P. was misled into believing that, if she took the time to fill out the survey, the results would be tabulated and her vendor would be ranked against its competitors. Her assumption was a reasonable one, and it was up to the survey company to make clear what was actually going on.
The fault here does not lie in the published list of rankings, though its usefulness is at best suspect. So long as the numbers presented are correct, the list as a whole is incomplete but not unrepresentative.
The fault lies in the survey company's having taken advantage of C.P. and her dissatisfaction with her vendor to involve her in a survey which, as matters turned out, was useless for her purposes. She's right to be annoyed.
Then one day you get an e-mail from a survey company, asking you to complete a confidential online satisfaction survey about your vendor's software product. You're told that customers of your vendor's competitors are being surveyed as well, and that a list of customer-satisfaction rankings will be published.
Bingo! Payback time! Now you can let your honest reactions surge forth. Your bosses will see how poorly your current vendor's product stacks up against the other software on the market and, quicker than you can say "flush my cache," they'll be dumping the old vendor.
That's exactly what happened to my reader C.P. The trouble was, her bosses never got to see how poorly their current software vendor did because, when the results were published a few months later, that vendor didn't show up in the rankings.
C.P. called the survey company to find out what was going on. The company told her that the vendor in question had chosen not to participate after seeing the survey results -- in other words, C.P. surmises, her vendor didn't want to see its name at the bottom of the published list.
"How valid is a survey if those ranked at the bottom can choose to bail out?" C.P. asks. "How fair is it to the vendor's customers, who took the time to respond, to not see the final results?"
Part of C.P.'s anger stems from righteous indignation at being misled into seeing this survey as an opportunity to prove to others -- and particularly to her bosses -- that her company's current software vendor isn't cutting it. And of course the survey company isn't in business to give C.P. and, presumably, other dissatisfied customers ammunition for their dissatisfaction, and is under no legal obligation to publish the full results.
Nonetheless, I understand C.P.'s resentment. Allowing poorly ranked companies to remove themselves from the published list may not affect the validity of the results that are published, since the companies who fared better did so by pleasing customers who responded to the survey. But dropping the names of companies that didn't perform well suggests that this survey will never be exhaustive enough to be truly useful for customers looking to compare software vendors. If the survey company allows drop-outs, after all, why would any company that didn't finish at the top in the rankings allow itself to appear in print?
Such limited surveys may well be useful to some companies, such as those that end up at the top of the list and want to use those findings to promote themselves. However, it's not fair for the survey company to give respondents the impression that they're participating in one type of survey when in fact they're participating in another. People put their time into responding out of certain expectations, and might not want to participate if their expectations were different.
The right thing for the survey company to do, in order to be fair to all involved, is to prominently place clear and detailed information about who is paying for the survey, whether and when companies have the ability to opt out, and exactly what information the survey taker will be able to see.
But that's not what happened. C.P. was misled into believing that, if she took the time to fill out the survey, the results would be tabulated and her vendor would be ranked against its competitors. Her assumption was a reasonable one, and it was up to the survey company to make clear what was actually going on.
The fault here does not lie in the published list of rankings, though its usefulness is at best suspect. So long as the numbers presented are correct, the list as a whole is incomplete but not unrepresentative.
The fault lies in the survey company's having taken advantage of C.P. and her dissatisfaction with her vendor to involve her in a survey which, as matters turned out, was useless for her purposes. She's right to be annoyed.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
TWO FOR THE PRICE OF TWO?
Sometimes a single ill-considered decision can turn a minor problem into a major one.
B.M., a reader from Columbus, Ohio, learned that fact firsthand after she bought a modestly priced MP3 player as a Christmas gift for her daughter. A month or so later, the device stopped working. B.M. contacted both the store and the manufacturer, and was told that the player would be replaced if she brought it in with the original receipt.
Problem: "Try as I did," she writes, "I was unable to locate the original receipt."
Here's where things began to get complicated. Since she couldn't find the receipt for her MP3 player, which she had purchased with a bank debit card, B.M. decided to purchase a new MP3 player from the same store. She then returned the broken player with the new receipt, and received a working replacement. She now has two working MP3 players, both of which she has paid for, so she thought the outcome was a fair one.
B.M.'s 16-year-old daughter is not so sure that her mother's strategy was ethical, however.
"Because I am trying very hard to raise my children with a sense of ethics," B.M. writes, "I would appreciate your opinion, since I have begun to doubt my own judgment in this matter."
B.M. may have been motivated by a sense of justice, but using the receipt for one piece of merchandise to return another was dishonest. It's not unreasonable for the store to require a receipt for anything that's returned, and it's not the store's fault that B.M. ended up without her receipt. To lie to the store in an effort to make up for her own error is wrong, even if the final numbers worked out fairly.
In this particular case, the right thing for B.M. to do would have been to take what documentation she had -- such as the debit-card statement from her bank, which presumably showed the date, the name of the retailer and the amount of the purchase -- and bring it to the retailer and explain the situation. Then the retailer should have done the right thing by replacing the defective merchandise.
Likely the store would have done so. If retailers want to keep our business, they don't go out of their way to make it hard to return defective stuff. But it's not the store's fault that B.M. lost her original receipt, and they're entitled to stick to the letter of their policy if they choose -- though it would hardly be good customer relations to do so.
Having acted as she did, the right thing for B.M. to do is to call the store, explain the situation and see what the manager says. Granted that the store got an extra MP3-player sale out of the deal, and in light of her willingness to set things right, chances are that the store management would either leave matters as they stand or perhaps even give her a refund for the extra player.
I suggest making the initial approach by telephone, however, because this advice isn't without risk. It's conceivable that the management might take a hard line and prosecute her for the misrepresentation by which she obtained the third player. If that's the case, I wouldn't advise her to go back in person, since I'm not convinced that so severe a punishment would be a fair resolution for this wrong.
Should that be the case, she should consider her lingering sense of guilt -- and the cost of that second, unnecessary MP3 player -- a relatively small price to pay for a useful lesson: Doing the right thing may take more effort in the short term, but in the long term it's always preferable. Especially if you're trying to set an example for your kid.
B.M., a reader from Columbus, Ohio, learned that fact firsthand after she bought a modestly priced MP3 player as a Christmas gift for her daughter. A month or so later, the device stopped working. B.M. contacted both the store and the manufacturer, and was told that the player would be replaced if she brought it in with the original receipt.
Problem: "Try as I did," she writes, "I was unable to locate the original receipt."
Here's where things began to get complicated. Since she couldn't find the receipt for her MP3 player, which she had purchased with a bank debit card, B.M. decided to purchase a new MP3 player from the same store. She then returned the broken player with the new receipt, and received a working replacement. She now has two working MP3 players, both of which she has paid for, so she thought the outcome was a fair one.
B.M.'s 16-year-old daughter is not so sure that her mother's strategy was ethical, however.
"Because I am trying very hard to raise my children with a sense of ethics," B.M. writes, "I would appreciate your opinion, since I have begun to doubt my own judgment in this matter."
B.M. may have been motivated by a sense of justice, but using the receipt for one piece of merchandise to return another was dishonest. It's not unreasonable for the store to require a receipt for anything that's returned, and it's not the store's fault that B.M. ended up without her receipt. To lie to the store in an effort to make up for her own error is wrong, even if the final numbers worked out fairly.
In this particular case, the right thing for B.M. to do would have been to take what documentation she had -- such as the debit-card statement from her bank, which presumably showed the date, the name of the retailer and the amount of the purchase -- and bring it to the retailer and explain the situation. Then the retailer should have done the right thing by replacing the defective merchandise.
Likely the store would have done so. If retailers want to keep our business, they don't go out of their way to make it hard to return defective stuff. But it's not the store's fault that B.M. lost her original receipt, and they're entitled to stick to the letter of their policy if they choose -- though it would hardly be good customer relations to do so.
Having acted as she did, the right thing for B.M. to do is to call the store, explain the situation and see what the manager says. Granted that the store got an extra MP3-player sale out of the deal, and in light of her willingness to set things right, chances are that the store management would either leave matters as they stand or perhaps even give her a refund for the extra player.
I suggest making the initial approach by telephone, however, because this advice isn't without risk. It's conceivable that the management might take a hard line and prosecute her for the misrepresentation by which she obtained the third player. If that's the case, I wouldn't advise her to go back in person, since I'm not convinced that so severe a punishment would be a fair resolution for this wrong.
Should that be the case, she should consider her lingering sense of guilt -- and the cost of that second, unnecessary MP3 player -- a relatively small price to pay for a useful lesson: Doing the right thing may take more effort in the short term, but in the long term it's always preferable. Especially if you're trying to set an example for your kid.
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