Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 30

Was airplane seat puncher in the wrong?

By now, it's very likely you've seen the viral video. It features a passenger in a non-reclining seat at the back of an airplane repeatedly punching the seat of the passenger in front of him who has reclined her seat.
The reclined passenger posted the video on Twitter with the message: "After much consideration, and exhausting every opportunity for #AmericanAirlines to do the right thing, I've decided to share my assault, from the passenger behind me, and the further threats, from an American Airline flight attendant. She offered him a complimentary cocktail!"
In later tweets, the reclined passenger indicated that she had had "extensive neck surgeries" and that her "cervical spine is completely fused, except for C1."
As the tweet went viral, others chimed in. Some found the reclined passenger to be inconsiderate for invading the space of the passenger behind her. She reportedly did move her seat up when he had asked her to during the meal service. Many others called out the seat puncher for his boorish behavior. However inconvenient, one tweeter wrote it didn't provide "an excuse for this man to bully you into submission."
First to get a bit of Twitter mechanics out of the way, if the reclining passenger was trying to send a copy of her tweet to AmericanAirlines customer service, she might have consider using the @ sign before her tweet rather than a hashtag.
But who was right?
Certainly, it was inappropriate for the flight attendant who was alerted to the punching of the seat to be dismissive of the complaint, if indeed that was what happened. Punching someone's seat repeatedly is hardly acceptable behavior.
But would the passenger stuck in the last row been in the right to insist that the person in front of him not recline? He certainly was in the right when he asked her if she could pull up her seat so he could use his tray table during meal service, and she seems to have complied.
If having the second-to-last seat reclined proves untenable for any passenger, then why does any airline allow that seat to recline? That it was a recline-able seat suggests any passenger in it should be able to avail himself or herself of that feature. Then again, just because we are capable of doing something doesn't always mean we should if we know it is causing discomfort to someone else.
The best response to the situation I've read was CBS "60 Minutes" correspondent John Dickerson's who tweeted:
"Not all rights must be exercised to their maximum extent, so maybe don't recline when it causes a special pinch on your fellow human. Mild suffering puts one in a position of finding grace, so use the irritation of the reclined seat to transcend yourself."
He's right. The right thing on a flight or anywhere else is to be mindful of whether our actions cause discomfort to others, but that when we do find ourselves to be mildly inconvenienced to refrain from doing our best to exhort discomfort in return. It's never too late to learn to play well with others, even if that message didn't take hold back in kindergarten. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Man wonders how neighbor got his number

At first, L.J. was simply baffled, but that bafflement slowly evolved to confused, and ultimately arrived at anger. Even though he had never had his landline phone number listed in the white pages, he did occasionally receive robocalls or solicitations from company representatives who had gotten his number off some list.
He could usually identify the latter because he or she would mention a legal first name that he never used. But this call was different.
"I'd like to speak with L.," the caller said when L.J.'s partner answered the phone on a recent Saturday morning.
When asked who was calling, the caller identified herself as a person known in their neighborhood. She told L.J.'s partner she had just received her real estate license and was calling neighbors to see if they knew anyone looking to buy or sell.
"I got L.'s number from the white pages," the caller said, referring to the old-fashioned phone book. L.J.'s partner told the caller he wasn't home and ended the call.
When she told L.J. about the call, the bafflement hit.
"I'm not in the white pages," he said. Nevertheless, that's what the caller had insisted.
She also seemed to know a bit more about L.J. than any white page listing would have revealed, such as his place of employment. "Had the caller Googled him?" he wondered.
Neither L.J. nor his partner dwelled on the matter much and went on with their day. It was when they were on their weekly walk together that it finally hit him.
"That's the neighbor who passed around the clipboard about a year ago at the neighborhood meeting about some new home construction, which required a zoning variance," L.J. said. The neighbor had said that she planned to use the information on the clipboard to notify neighbors of any new meetings scheduled with city representatives.
L.J. was miffed. "I think she's using that list to mine for new customers," he told his partner. "That's just wrong."
"Should I call her and tell her to stop?" L.J. writes. "If she's getting my contact information off of that list, then she's likely doing it to others."
If the neighbor was using information from a list intended for a civic purpose to advance her own business, she was wrong. If she's lying about where she got L.J.'s number that compounds the wrongness of her action. Beyond being unethical, it's also bad business, because who wants to do business with someone who's deceptive from the get-go.
But what if L.J. is wrong? If his newly minted realtor neighbor actually did get his number from some online service calling itself the "white pages," then he finds himself in the position of jumping to conclusions and falsely accusing a neighbor of being dishonest.
He's got two choices: He can call her up and ask her where she really got his number, or he can simply tell her he doesn't know anyone buying or selling and let it go. Were it me, I'd let it go, not only because it's the right thing to do, but also to avoid having to get another sales talk over the phone. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should contractor have used photo without permission?

For two months, a reader writes that she and her partner worked with a contractor to gut and renovate a bathroom in their house.
"The work took about three weeks longer than we anticipated," writes H.F. "But we were glad when we finally had the house back to ourselves."
For the most part, H.F. writes that she and her spouse were pleased with the work the contractor and his crew had done. They got a spiffy new bathroom, which they had been hoping for for many years.
There were some small things -- doors left open during a cold day, cigarette butts in the driveway tossed by some of the contractor's crew, minor miscues about where something should be placed -- but overall the contractor was very responsive and delivered on what he had promised. What pleased them most was that the project came in slightly less than 5% over the projected budget.
"We never expected to spend less than the original bid," writes H.F. Besides, "some of that extra cost resulted from us choosing some fixtures we liked that were slightly more than the original allowances in the contractor's bid."
A few weeks later, H.F.'s partner noticed that the contractor had posted a photo of the bathroom on his company's Facebook page with a comment to the effect of: "Another finished bathroom, another happy customer!"
That wasn't exactly untrue, writes, H.F. "But he never told us he was going to post a photo. And he never asked us if we were happy with the job."
It's not exactly an invasion of privacy, H.F. figures. "He didn't post our names nor the location of our house. No one would know it was our bathroom unless they were guests in the house." Even then, H.F. figures it's unlikely any of their guests would be scanning their contractor's Facebook page nor connect the photo to their bathroom even if they did.
"Still," she asks, "shouldn't he have asked our permission to post the photo?" If he had wanted to post a sign advertising business on our lawn while he was working on the house, she would have expected him to ask permission.
H.F. is right. There is no way to identify the bathroom as hers from the photo posted. She's also correct that he should have asked if he had wanted to post a sign on their property.
But the photo itself, because it is unidentifiable, doesn't seem to breach any ethical code nor violate H.F. and her partner's privacy in any way.
Where the contractor seems to have overstepped is when he posted the "another happy customer" comment without confirming that the customer was, indeed, happy. Before he used an alleged response in his post, the contractor should have actually solicited a response from his customer.
It may appear to be a small detail, but it would have been the honest and right thing to do. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Is it ok to duck out of a professional seminar early?

You might remember Lucinda, the licensed mental health-care professional, who sent in a question a little over a year ago about the appropriateness of speakers at professional seminars claiming to not be promoting books they had written when their whole presentations strike Lucinda as a promotion for books they have written on sale at the seminar.
As you might also recall, Lucinda is required to complete a set number of continuing education credits to keep her licensing up to date. To do this requires attending several of these professional seminars every year.
Back then I advised Lucinda that the right thing for presenters at such seminars to do is to give the strongest, most relevant presentations possible, provide strong materials and then let attendees decide if they are interested enough to want to read more from the presenter.
Lucinda is in the middle of her seminar-attending season again to keep up her continuing education. "The seminars can be expensive," Lucinda writes.
Fortunately, the health-care agency she works for reimburses the cost of attending. After each seminar, the attendees fill out an evaluation and are issued a certificate of completion.
"I'm sure some of the others are getting reimbursed for attending these seminars as well," writes Lucinda. But she notes that many attendees leave at least an hour or two before the seminar is concluded.
"Is it wrong to get reimbursed for a seminar if you leave before it's finished?" she asks.
Apparently, Lucinda could leave early too and still get credit for the seminar and her employer would never know. She writes that she stays until the end partly out of wanting to make sure she gets as much from the seminar as possible ("although some are clunkers," she writes) and partly out of a sense of obligation to her employer.
There are two questions worth addressing here. The first isn't one that Lucinda posed, but it's important nonetheless: Is it right to get full credit for a seminar when you leave well before it is over? Issuing credit to someone who doesn't attend the full event seems dishonest and wrong. If the final hours of a seminar are designed to be unessential because the company putting on the seminar knows people leave early, then the seminar provider should consider either dropping those hours or better yet strengthening the curriculum so it is strong from start to finish.
Now to Lucinda's question. The professionals getting reimbursed to attend a seminar should attend the full seminar. If their employers never check or simply don't care, that doesn't change the fact that fulfilling the obligation you committed to is the right thing to do. Being able to shift your responsibility without anyone catching on doesn't make it OK to do so.
If doing the right thing by trying to stay up to date in your profession is so overwhelming that spending an extra hour or two doing so seems unbearable, it might be time to consider finding better seminars or a new line of work. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Get involved in event and help clean up afterward

Boston is a city of neighborhoods. There's the city proper, but Boston also encompasses Roxbury, Dorchester, the South End, South Boston, Allston Brighton, Hyde Park, Jamaica Plain, Charlestown, Back Bay, Bay Village, West Roxbury, Roslindale, the North End, Mattapan, Beacon Hill, East Boston and a handful of others whose residents will chide me for leaving them off the list. There are 23 neighborhoods in all, and each has its own personality.
But one constant in each of the neighborhoods is a plethora of signs and placards on trees, telephone poles, and occasionally a fence or two. The signs advertise everything from dog-sitting services and neighborhood yard sales to area concerts and political candidates.
Technically, the city frowns on the signs. One section of the city's official website dealing with "common code enforcement issues," there's this: "You can't post signs of any form in the City, including on city buildings, poles or traffic light posts, private property, or trees."
Nevertheless, the signs persist.
Often the signs persist long after the items featured on them have come and gone. That they linger irks one reader who lives in one of Boston's many neighborhoods.
"We've had an annual yard sale every fall in our neighborhood for at least the past 20 years," writes A.W. Responsibility for organizing the sale and getting signs up, maps made and social media notifications out has shifted frequently over the years.
For the past couple of years, A.W. writes that the organizers don't take down the dozens of signs they've posted on telephone poles and trees after the sale is over.
"Even three months later, I'm still seeing some posters for the sale."
At first, A.W. was reluctant to take a sign down that someone else had posted. But as the weeks wore on, the fading signs struck her as a bit of a blight and she began to take one down every time she ran into one.
"But I don't know where they were all put up," she writes.
"Shouldn't the organizers be responsible for making sure any signs they put up are taken down after the event?" asks A.W.
Yes, of course they should, and not just because they were likely violating city code by posting them in the first place. Leaving the signs up after the event concludes and allowing them to turn into neighborhood litter might suggest a lack of respect for the neighborhood.
The right thing is for the volunteer organizers to make plans to take the signs down. But because the signs concern A.W., there is a way for her to increase the likelihood that the problem is addressed at next year's sale.
A.W. indicates she looks forward to the neighborhood yard sale every year. She enjoys selling and buying stuff and schmoozing with neighbors and visitors who descend upon the neighborhood to shop. She's involved in the sale, but she has never been part of the team that organizes the event. Because she ends up removing some of the signs as she happens upon them after the event anyway, A.W. might want to volunteer to assist next year by being the person who removes the signs after the event.
Sometimes getting more involved yields desired results. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 

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

Be kind when no one is looking

As my senior project at Bethany College, I took the advice of John Taylor, an English professor who fancied himself a curmudgeon but was among the kindest and most supportive professors on campus to many of us.
He suggested I look at the maxims of the 17th century French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld, to see if I could draw any parallels from his words to modern behavior.
Shortly after the new year, I came across one of La Rochefoucauld's maxims that has stuck with me many years after college: "When our hatred is too bitter it places us below those whom we hate." The sentiment seems to be timeless and particularly salient now. It's one that has been echoed by others in essays, comic strips, political stump speeches, commencement addresses and elsewhere.
If we stoop to hating that with which we disagree, we risk becoming far worse than the thing we hated.
One antidote to stooping to hatred is also timeless, although it too has often failed to make its way from words to actions, and that's the charge to be kind.
In his biography of the writer Henry James, Leon Edel writes about James' nephew Billy's recollection of his uncle saying, "Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind."
The quote is often attributed to Mister Rogers. Ellen DeGeneres regularly ends her daily television show with the admonition: "Be kind to one another." When I was invited to address the student body of Bethany College several years ago, the important message of being relentlessly kind was central to the talk I gave. I still believe so.
When small acts of kindness particularly to strangers are committed, they are often met with surprise, suggesting that making an effort to be kind is not yet the norm.
On two successive days this month, B.G. was surprised by kindness in Colorado where she lives. After she responded "not smooth" to the barista who asked her how her day was going, he responded with: "Well, then your drink is on me." A day later as B.G. was gathering her belongings from her car after she parked, a woman knocked on her window to let her know she was putting money in the parking meter for her. Two small acts that shifted B.G.'s mood about her day.
As B.G. put it, the acts "completely reframed my mindset."
"Kindness is powerful," B.G. observed.
Indeed, it can be. And I'm not talking about the type of kindness that results in finding your name splashed across local or national media because you paid off someone's tuition bill or you left a sizeable tip to a hardworking waiter. I'm not talking about doing good deeds because some research has found that doing so can result in reducing physical pain from which you might be suffering.
Those are indeed acts of kindness, but even more important are those which we commit with no expectation of anything in return.
Kindness can indeed prove powerful. The right thing is to be kind even when no one is looking. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

How to help teachers buy classroom supplies

For the past several years, Eight Cousins, the independent bookstore in Falmouth, Massachusetts, has erected an artificial Christmas tree near its front register and decorated it with paper ornaments featuring the ages and sometimes first names of 300 to 500 children and teenagers.
Local schools and organizations provide the store with the names, ages and often the type of books each child likes to read. Customers can take an ornament off the tree and search for a book for that child or enlist the help of one of the store's workers.
There are also some ornaments with cash amounts on them that go into a general fund that's used to purchase books for any children whose names weren't selected. Any cash donations remaining are applied to the purchase of the following year's books. Eight Cousins gives buyers a 15% discount on the books they purchase from the giving tree.
The effort increases sales a bit for an independent bookstore operating in a small village on Cape Cod where foot traffic dips dramatically in the winter months. It also provides an opportunity for customers to give back to the community, whether they live there or not. But mostly, the effort gets books into the hands of children who express a desire to own a book of their own, but who might not be able to afford the purchase of a new book.
Are strangers ethically responsible for purchasing books for people they don't know? No. That they want to do so anyway if they're able suggests a commitment to their community that should be applauded.
But it's not just at holiday time when resources like books are in need.
That local schools are involved in Eight Cousins annual giving tree project is not surprising. Most teachers go out of their way to provide students with materials and supplies that might help them learn. It's also well-publicized that many teachers spend their own money to supplement the supplies for their classrooms. According to the Economic Policy Institute, kindergarten through 12-grade public school teachers spend an average of $459 a year of their own money to purchase school supplies. (The range goes from North Dakota teachers averaging $327 to California averaging $664 out of pocket.)
Just as Eight Cousins has its giving tree of names, many teachers have taken to the internet to post wish lists for supplies and materials they otherwise would be paying for with their own money.
Donorschoose.org was founded in 2000 by teacher Charles Best. On the site, teachers can post requests for funding for projects. Anyone can search the listings for projects and help fund them.
Another site, Teacherlists.com, was founded by Tim Sullivan in 2012. It features supply lists and wish lists from teachers. Anyone can look up a school's list and link directly to any number of online merchants to fulfill their lists.
Again, there is no ethical imperative that anyone should contribute to help offset the cost of school supplies often paid for by public school teachers. But if anyone is looking for another way to help teachers do their job and students benefit from their efforts, then chipping in is the right thing to do. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

A look back at the year in doing the right thing

At the end of each year, I take stock of the 52 or so Right Thing columns I've written to get a sense of the scope of topics I've covered, the types of concerns readers share, and what I might do better in the coming year.
I also regularly look at which columns seemed to draw the most attention from readers.
I try to gauge reader interest to get a sense of what type of ethical issues seem most important to readers in their day-to-day lives. I look at the analytics of the website where the weekly column gets posted after it has run in publications subscribing to it.
The five most viewed columns in 2019 touched on honesty, cheating, courtesy and racism.
The fifth-most-viewed column, "If you meet racism atthe store, do you call it out?" ran in October. It focused on an item sold at a reader's local big box department store that featured a racist saying on it. Noting that it was wrong for the store to carry such an item, I urged the store to reconsider. I emailed a copy of the column to an executive at the company, and it was acknowledged. The item still is carried on the store's website, however. They should remove it and do better about not carrying offensive items.
The fourth-most-viewed column, "Do employers haveresponsibility to let applicants know when they didn't get the job?" ran in February. I think that employers have an obligation to respond in a timely fashion to applicants who are not offered a job. Readers are right to find such ghosting objectionable.
The third-most-viewed column, "To tidy up, can Itell a small fib?" also ran in February. After donating household items to the Big Brother Big Sister Foundation the prior year, a reader was given a receipt with the date left blank. The reader asked if it would be wrong to use the receipt to claim tax deductible items again this year and just fill out a new date even though she had already taken the deduction for those items. Cheating on your taxes is illegal. Lying is wrong.
The second-most-viewed column, "Don't cheat your waytoward college admission, but do this ..." ran in March. It was a response to the college admission scandal involving many celebrities and wealthy parents. Obviously, it's wrong to lie to get a child into a college. But my column focused on giving free advice to prospective students on how to write a strong and honest application essay. The advice remains available for anyone who cares to use it.
Finally, the most-viewed column of the year, "Do youbelieve others will do the right thing?" ran in July. In it, I wrote about a study that showed that people are more likely to return wallets containing money than those that contained no money, a result which ran counter to what most felt would be the case. The results were a heartening reminder that when faced with the challenge, most people will do the right thing.
Thank you for filling my email with another great year of questions and stories and for continuing to read The Right Thing column. May you have a year full of both doing the right thing and being surrounded by those who choose to do the same. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2020 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Don't look for problems before they arise

A new employee just began working with a reader we're calling Mary Beth. So far, writes Mary Beth, they've hit it off quite well. Mary Beth has been asked to serve as a mentor for her new colleague and she's gladly obliged.
While the co-workers have found that they live in the same city, have many shared interests and enjoy one another's company, Mary Beth recently learned that her colleague's spouse works for their city's mayor.
"She only brought it up once or twice," Mary Beth writes, "but I'm concerned that our relationship might suffer if she tries to engage my help to get the guy re-elected."
Mary Beth didn't vote for the mayor, she writes. She also longs for a candidate who can beat the mayor, who seems entrenched in his position.
Mayoral contests in Mary Beth's city are not conducted along political party lines. She has no idea if her colleague belongs to a particular party nor if she holds political views that go against hers. She's simply concerned that when the time comes for the mayor's next campaign, tension might arise between her and her colleague if she invites Mary Beth to any campaign functions.
"Should I say something now?" Mary Beth asks. "Or make my feelings about our current mayor known?" Doing so, she figures, might stave off any future awkward invites.
Many workplaces have policies forbidding employees to bring political activities into the workplace. But it's unclear to Mary Beth whether an invitation from her colleague to a political event would violate such a policy, especially because she and her colleague have discussed getting together outside of work.
If Mary Beth is truly concerned, perhaps the first thing she might do is to look up her company's policy on political activity in the workplace. Given that she is a mentor to her new colleague, having such information available might prove useful and instructive should her colleague decide to engage in something that violates company policy.
But aside from mentioning where her spouse works, her colleague, according to Mary Beth, has never engaged in political talk nor has she encouraged Mary Beth nor anyone to attend functions for the mayor. So far, her colleague has been professional and has done nothing to put Mary Beth or any other co-worker into an awkward position when it comes to mayoral politics.
If Mary Beth brings up the issue, she runs the risk of appearing judgmental or that she is looking for a confrontation where none exists. No good is likely to come from blurting out: "You know I can't stand your spouse's boss, so don't even think of inviting me," It's also a bit presumptuous for Mary Beth to assume she'd be invited to anything before the invitation is extended.
The right thing is for Mary Beth to continue to mentor her colleague as best she can. If there are company policies about which the colleague should know, then Mary Beth can point these out to her. Good mentors help their mentees get settled. They don't go looking for problems before they exist. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Boss shouldn't get heads-up about colleague's intentions

"My boss doesn't like to be surprised," writes a reader we're calling Ken. But he's undecided if he should give the boss a heads-up about a colleague who might approach her about a raise.
A few days ago, Ken writes that he received a phone call from a colleague seeking his advice. The colleague has been with the company for a couple of years and regularly seeks out Ken's advice since he has been working there for more than a decade.
"Typically, his calls are easy enough to respond to and often deal with how to navigate company policy and procedures," writes Ken. But on this call, the colleague told Ken that he had been contacted by an employee with a competitor encouraging him to apply for an open position with the competing firm.
"Do you think it would be wrong to ask for more money here?" Ken's colleague asked him, making clear that he wanted to know if their boss would respond badly to such a request.
Ken told his colleague he couldn't predict how the boss would respond, but he thought that if the colleague wanted to ask about the possibility of a raise, that was his decision. He advised him that instead of threatening to quit if he doesn't get a raise, he should simply make the case for why the boss should consider paying him more. If he truly feels underpaid, Ken told him, then there's no reason not to ask the boss if he can set up time to meet with her.
Ken likes his colleague, but he also likes his boss. She has been demanding, but has strongly supported him in the work he does for the company. He is confident that she would appreciate knowing that the colleague might be approaching her about a raise before such a meeting occurs.
"Should I call or stop by her office to tell her?" Ken asks.
Regardless of the fact that Ken's colleague didn't ask him to keep their conversation confidential, he did the right thing by listening to him, offering advice sought and leaving it at that. It is not his responsibility to let his boss know to expect some incoming confrontation from the colleague over pay. That decision should be his colleague's.
Because Ken doesn't even know if his colleague will follow through and contact the boss, giving her a heads-up might result in a mess of miscommunication.
Even if Ken's colleague had asked him to alert the boss, the right thing would be for Ken to decline the request. If the colleague wants to talk to the boss about a pay raise, it's his responsibility to make the effort to talk with her directly.
It can be a good thing to have a mentor or a confidant in the workplace who can offer career advice. But that advice should never take the place of the person seeking it ultimately deciding what he or she wants to do and then having the courage to act on his or her convictions. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of  The Right Thing: Conscience, Profit and Personal Responsibility in Today's Business and The Good, the Bad, and Your Business: Choosing Right When Ethical Dilemmas Pull You Apart, is a lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at  Harvard's Kennedy School . 
Follow him on Twitter: @jseglin 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
(c) 2019 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.