Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 37

When friends don't want friends to talk politics

"I can't talk to my neighbor," says "Bart," a reader.
At first, Bart and his neighbor, "Mel," were friendly. They talked sports. They shared opinions about new construction going on in their small town. Occasionally, they even borrowed tools from one another, each of them dutifully returning them in pristine condition.
But over the decade or so they've known each other, it became clear that Bart and Mel didn't have much common ground when it came to politics or how they chose to express their opinions on politics. Bart rarely broadcast his political opinions to anyone. But Mel regularly staked campaign signs on his front lawn and bumper sticks on his car's bumper.
The signs and bumper stickers didn't bother Bart (too much) and, early on, he and Mel never discussed them, the candidates they represented, or the views the candidates held. But things shifted a couple of years ago, Bart writes.
"He wouldn't stop talking about politics," Bart says. "And he'd get worked up and angry and was always talking about political stuff."
Bart now believes he can't be around Mel because he finds it too aggravating. "Some of the stuff he believes I think is just stupid," says Bart. "I don't think he has any idea that I don't agree with him on any of his politics."
Nevertheless, Bart still likes Mel and remembers how much he enjoyed having a neighbor with whom he could just shoot the breeze or borrow an occasional tool.
Bart wants to know if he is wrong to avoid Mel because he doesn't want to listen to him talk about politics any more.
Bart, and any of us, are free to choose to avoid anyone we want to avoid for any reason, as long as we don't cause harm to them in the process.
But from Bart's revelation that Mel has no idea what his political views are, it seems like Bart might not be giving Mel the opportunity to be a bit more sensitive with his vocal outpourings. If Mel doesn't know that his commentary causes Bart discomfort, then Bart has no idea if their friendship can return to focus on the stuff they each enjoy discussing.
Bart doesn't need to get into an argument with Mel. Nor does he need to reveal his own political leanings if he doesn't want to. But a first move before avoiding Mel altogether might be for Bart to simply tell him that talking about politics makes him uncomfortable and he'd rather not.
If nevertheless Mel persists, then Bart's decision to avoid Mel or limit the time around him seems a more reasonable decision. Bart may ultimately decide that he finds Mel's political views so offensive that he chooses not to associate with him at all. But right now, he simply doesn't want to have his neighbor talk politics with him. Sports, town activities, the proper way to winterize a lawn mower, yes. Politics, no.
If he'd like to maintain the friendship, the first thing Bart might do is to give Mel the benefit of the doubt that he will listen to Bart and honor his request. That's what friends do. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

To combat fake news, try to correct it when you see it

During the second week of September, I started to receive messages from former students, colleagues and friends letting me know that an old video of me was making the rounds as part of an online article about the top 10 colleges for writers in 2018. When I went to the link they'd included in their messages, I scrolled through the post, which listed the best colleges in reverse order. There's no indication how the list was determined.
Kenyon College clocked in as the ninth best college for writing and was accompanied by a video of one of its alumni, the writer John Green extolling the virtues of the place. At No. 6, Emory University, a videoof Associate Professor Jericho Brown's TEDx Emory talk on the art of words leads the entry. And there, sure enough, right atop the entry for Emerson College, what the writer of the piece indicated was the No. 1 college for writing in the United States, was a 2 minute, 10 second video of me posted eight years ago to YouTube.
While John Green was mentioned in the write-up for Kenyon, neither Professor Brown nor I were in the write-ups for Emerson. It appeared that the writer or an editor had scoured the web for videos after the piece itself was written. Fair enough.
But while Professor Brown appears to still be on thefaculty of Emory, I left Emerson in August 2011, something that the writer and editor could easily have known if they'd checked the online directory or faculty listings for Emerson.
There's nothing I say in the video that I still don't believe. Emerson was a great place to teach and it still does have a unique writing, literature and publishing department. It's hardly likely that any reader of the piece would choose to attend Emerson because I happened to speak to them through their computer or smartphone as they read the list. It's equally unlikely that riches will befall me because any viewers mistakenly think I'm still affiliated with what the site deems to be the best in the land.
But to any viewer of the video, it appears I'm still on the faculty there, and that would be incorrect.
I didn't post the video nor did I write the article, but when we find information about us that isn't accurate, even if it presents us in a good light, do we have an obligation to try to correct it?
I believe it's the right thing to do. And I believe the writer or editor has the obligation to correct the error and ideally run a note indicating that the piece had been corrected.
The day after I saw the piece, almost a month ago now, I emailed the writer of the post thanking her for including Emerson on her top 10 list but letting her know that I hadn't taught at Emerson for going on eight years. I never heard back, and as I write this column, the video still remains on an article that's been shared 711 times.
If we want to read accurate information, then we have an obligation to let providers of that information know when they got something wrong. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Seek permission to post images to social media before assuming it's OK

Arlene, a woman from Boston whose real name is not Arlene, was invited to attend a gathering of community organizations in her area. The gathering was being held in the backyard of a private residence not far from where Arlene lives.
For many years Arlene has wanted to get more involved in her community so she was glad to attend the gathering. When she arrived, a sign directed her to a sizeable backyard where the event was to occur. She was asked to fill out and put on a name tag so others in attendance would know who she was. She gladly complied.
After some small talk and the partaking of some tasty snacks provided by the host, the speakers from the various organizations spoke to the assembled group about their missions and what opportunities there were for people to get involved.
It was an enjoyable event, Arlene writes. She gathered some literature on some of the organizations so she could follow up. One representative even gave her a T-shirt on her way out.
But Arlene was surprised a few days later when a friend of hers told her she had seen her photo posted on someone's social media site, which was accessible for the general public to see. She emailed Arlene a link to the post and sure enough there she was standing in the backyard with a few others in the backyard of a private residence. The note accompanying the post identified the event.
"No one ever asked me for permission to post my photo," Arlene writes. "I didn't even know anyone was taking photos."
Arlene wants to know if the poster was wrong to post the photo of her and a few others without securing their permission.
As I've mentioned often, I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak definitively about the legality of posting someone's photo without permission. Laws vary from country to country. In the United States, generally taking someone's photo in a public place is fair game, but in a private setting it's not. Given that this was a public meeting in a private setting, I'll let the lawyers sort out the legalities.
But from an ethical standpoint, the photographer should have sought permission of people in the photo prior to posting it online. People have a right to expect to have some control of whether their images are posted on social media.
If the poster was from one of the organizations, then that person should have mentioned that photos were being taken of the event. If it was posted by another attendee, he or she should have taken the time to seek out permission.
Not everyone wants the world to know where they've been at any given moment of the day without their consent. But common courtesy would dictate that if you plan to post someone's visage on your social media site which is accessible to the general public, the right thing is to let that someone know.
It's perfectly reasonable for Arlene to ask the friend who notified her to ask the poster of the photo to take it down. Perhaps receiving this message would remind the poster that while he might not care about his own privacy that doesn't give him the right to decide for others about theirs. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Did journalist cross the line to gain access?

After finishing teaching a morning class last Thursday, I returned to my office around noon. I had an hour before meetings with students began for the rest of the afternoon, so I took a few minutes to catch up on email. Among them was an alert from Twitter.
"Curious to know @jseglin's ethics take on a journalist pretending to be a student to gain access to a subject in a classroom. #KavanaughHearings"

Because I'd been in class, I hadn't been watching the Senate hearings so I didn't know to what specifically the tweet was in reference, but it struck me as a pretty basic question, so I responded:
"If the journalist told someone he or she was a student to get into the classroom, that's wrong. If the journalist walked into the classroom to approach a subject, that's something else."
I stand by that observation. While good reporters should be tenacious about doing their jobs well in reporting newsworthy stories, they should not misrepresent themselves.
In a follow-up exchange with the tweeter, he clarified that his question arose from a comment Dr. Christine Blasey Ford made during her testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. He wanted to know whether it was ethically wrong for a journalist to pretend to be a student to gain access to Dr. Ford's classroom at Palo Alto University, where she teaches. If that had happened, it would have indeed been wrong.
The transcript of the hearings, however, don't indicate that Dr. Ford told the Senate hearing that a reporter misrepresented herself. What Dr. Ford said in a response to a question from Senator Dianne Feinstein asking why she ultimately decided to come forward was that "a reporter appeared in my graduate classroom and I mistook her for a student, and she came up to ask me a question, and I thought she was a student and it turned out that she was a reporter." After this incident, Dr. Ford "felt like enough was enough" and she decided to go public with her allegations of sexual assault toward U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh.
A fair question might be about why it was so easy for a stranger to make her way into a classroom at a private university without being asked by anyone who she was and why she was there. If the reporter in Dr. Ford's classroom misrepresented herself to gain access to the classroom or if she snuck her way past security guards or well-posted no-trespassing signs to gain access to private property, she was wrong. (Palo Alto University is a private university.)
Dr. Ford, as a private citizen unused to the public spotlight, had every right to feel overwhelmed by those who were attempting to speak with her. When Dr. Ford discovered the person coming up to her after class was a reporter, she obviously could have stopped talking to her or asked her to leave. If she did, the reporter should have honored that request.
But the answer to the question tweeted at me is that the right thing was for the reporter not to break the law nor misrepresent herself to gain access. Dr. Ford's testimony doesn't indicate the reporter did either. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

A yard sale discovery yields priceless character

When Sam Lapin of Union, Ky., bought a box of roughed-up model railroad pieces at a yard sale he saw advertised on Facebook, he never expected to find a small box containing a diamond ring among the purchase.
After taking the ring to a local jeweler, Lapin learned it was worth about $900.
He wrestled with whether to return the ring.
"What are your thoughts on the ethics of me keeping or returning the ring?" he asked me in an email.
Typically, at yard sales the burden falls on those selling the goods to make sure they know what they are selling. If a painting sold for $10 turns out to be a masterpiece worth thousands, the luck falls on the buyer of the portrait.
While Lapin's experience was a bit different and it seemed likely that the ring got mixed in with the model railroad by mistake, it still fell on the seller to make sure what he was selling ahead of time.
But I told Sam that none of this meant that out of kindness or thoughtfulness he mightn't let the seller know, particularly since it could have been a misplaced family piece that had far more value to the seller than it did to him.
Sam didn't wait for my response to decide the right thing to do. He sent the seller a message via his Facebook posting, letting him know about his find and asking him if he would like the ring back.
It turns out the seller, Jeffrey Kotz, had no idea the ring was in the box with the railroad stuff. About 15 years ago, Kotz's daughter had been given the engagement ring by a boyfriend. The engagement was broken off, and a few years later, Kotz bought the ring from his daughter when she needed some money.
"I was pleasantly surprised to hear he found the ring," Kotz told me, explaining that he had intended to set the ring and some other stuff aside that he didn't want to sell at the large yard sale he staged to "rid myself of some junk."
Lapin did not ask for anything in return. But Kotz asked him if he'd seen anything else at the yard sale that interested him. As luck with have it, Kotz still had the used laptop Lapin had had his eye on, and he gave it to Lapin as a thank you for the return of the diamond ring.
"There are a lot of folks out there that would have been happy and fortunate" to find the ring and would have said nothing, writes Kotz.
Lapin offered to drive the ring over to Kotz's house, but Kotz insisted that Lapin had already gone above and beyond so he drove to Lapin's house.
"We need more people of integrity like Sam," writes Kotz.
"Character is how you behave when no one is looking," writes the psychiatrist Robert Coles in The Call of Stories: Teaching and the Moral Imagination (Houghton Mifflin, 1989). In offering to return the ring no one knew he had, Lapin showed character and did the right thing.
"I am glad the ring is back where it belongs," writes Lapin. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

What ethical issues do you care about most?

What ethical issues do readers care about most?
Is it how to wrestle with coarse behavior by political leaders? Choosing not to lie when faced with seemingly attractive options?
From time to time, I check the online analytics to see which of the ethics columns I've written receive the most page hits. Given the current political environment, you'd think coarse behavior and choosing whether to lie might make the top viewed columns. But none crack the top of the list.
Granted the assessment is highly unscientific since it's impossible for me to know if a column that is called up is actually read, but by far the top three columns viewed are whether to accept a job offer made by someone who bad mouths colleagues, whether to stop a scavenger from taking returnable cans and bottles from your trash can, and whether companies have an obligation to try to actually help customers in need.
The three columns span 12 years in appearance, with the scavenger piece having run the longest ago (Jan. 29, 2006) and coming in second, the customer service column running five years ago (March 24, 2013) and coming in third, and What does this tell me about readers?
For one, it doesn't mean they don't care about other issues since those receive a good number of views as well. But the viewing habit does suggest that readers care the most about ethical issues, which are likely to affect them on a deeply personal basis. Almost all of us have had bad customer service experiences. Many of us have wondered if it was wrong to let scavengers pick from our trash rather than let the city reap any recycling benefits. And few of us have not had to wrestle with how to respond to someone bad mouthing someone we don't know.
Should we care more about political leaders lying to us? Certainly.
Should we be concerned with how honest we are with other people? Of course.
But day to day, we seem to lose sleep over what might seem like petty issues to some. It makes a certain amount of sense that we spend more time worrying about the pressing issues at hand that involve things others are doing to us. We can turn down the job offer from a bad-mouthing interviewer, change cellphone providers, or change the way we dispose of our trash.
We should care as much about our own behavior and whether we choose to lie, of course. And we should care as much about politicians behaving badly. But it's easy to set these issues aside when we need to deal with the trash habits of strangers.
The right thing, however, is to care as much about how we behave and the leaders we choose. Fortunately, it's not an either or situation and we are capable of doing both.
In the meantime, please continue to tell me about the ethical issues you care about most. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Is it OK to use a sales clerk's expertise to make an online purchasing decision?

Readers regularly ask if it is ethically OK to shop at a bricks and mortar store with no intention of buying something if they can find it cheaper online. Their reasoning is that sometimes they like to see and touch the item before ordering it and what better way to do this than to go to a store that has it in stock.
In the past, I've responded that while there is nothing unethical about shopping around for an item -- in both physical and online stores -- you cross a line if you take up salespeople's time and expertise if you never had any intention of making a purchase from them.
Lately, the questions have been coming from retail store salespeople who question the ethics of customers who take up their time when the customer has no intention of buying anything. Especially in a store where salespeople are paid a commission on the specific items they sell, the salespeople suggest, they are distracting them from working with actual potential customers and causing them to risk their livelihood if they spend so much time with customers who have no intention of buying anything rather than those who do.
Granted, it's a risk any salesperson takes when holding a sales job. Some prospective customers just don't end up buying anything. But at least they might have purchased something. What about those who go to a store for the sole purpose of confirming for themselves the purchases they plan to make online?
While I make an effort to support independent retailers in my community, I must confess that unless I want or need an item right away, I often shop around online to find the best price.
But when I go to my local independent hardware store, and Zack spends 20 minutes with me explaining how to carve out a piece of rotted wood from the bottom of a window frame and then walks me through the steps to repairing it along with the materials I'd need to accomplish the task, I feel obliged to buy those materials from Zack's store.
It's not just that Zack came up with a solution that was significantly less expensive than the YouTube tutorial I had previously consulted online. It was mostly because Zack and his co-workers have consistently provided me with solid advice and good service.
I know when I buy from Zack that I can go back to the store and seek further wisdom if I am running into a problem with a project. I can't expect the same level of service if I buy materials online and things don't quite work out.
While it's unlikely that the advice given by sales clerks in a bookshop or a clothing store would result in me having to return for more advice on the same items I purchase, the relationships I build with them based on their time and expertise makes me choose to buy from them.
Don't get me wrong. I still make clothing, book, and hardware purchases online. But if I expect an in-person sales clerk to continue to provide me with their expertise and service, then the right thing is to respect them enough to give them the sale when they take the time to work with me. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Call me by my name

Occasionally when readers or others write to me, they refer to me as "Dr. Seglin." I typically respond to readers when they email me with questions or positive or negative thoughts on something I've written. But I'm often torn about whether to correct them about addressing me as "Dr.," since I am not a doctor.
My hesitancy is because I don't want them to feel embarrassed about the mistake. My guess is that they think I might be a doctor because I teach at a college. (It certainly has nothing to do with any perception about my ability to heal.) But I also don't want to let the error go uncorrected and give off the perception that I'm laying claim to a title I have no right to claim.
While my alma mater might feel comfortable addressing its correspondence to me as "Dr. Seglin" because of an honorary degree it was kind enough to award me, it's the only place that feels compelled to do so. At best, I'm an "Honorary Dr."
I was reminded of this after receiving a note from a reader -- let's call him Otto -- who recently received an invitation to participate in an industry conference. Those who invited Otto referenced his credentials as a variety of things in their invitation, some of which he has never claimed to be.
Otto is inclined to want to accept the invitation to participate, but he is wrestling with whether to take the time to correct those who invited him when he responds.
"I could just accept the invitation," Otto writes. "But if I do without correcting them, am I misleading them?" He also wonders if they might rescind the invitation if they find out that he is not exactly what they might have thought he was when they invited him.
"If I accept now, then I could correct them prior to the conference," he writes, wondering what the right thing to do is.
Otto's motivation shouldn't be to correct the inviters only if he knows the invitation won't be rescinded once they discover the error. Hiding that he is not who they think he is to get to the conference would be dishonest.
The right thing for Otto to do, regardless of his reasoning, would be to include a clarification in his response to the inviters. They likely will appreciate the response and it will also ensure that he is not incorrectly listed in any materials that are distributed to other attendees.
If he doesn't correct the inviters and his name appears with the wrong credentials, he also runs the risk of being perceived as someone who claims to be that which he is not. But the main reason he should correct the inviters is that the information about him is wrong and he knows it, just as I know and now you do too that I am not a real doctor.
I encourage each of you to write me whenever you'd like with questions about any ethical dilemmas or conundrums you may be facing, but please call me Jeffrey. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

If I buy nothing, can I re-sell it?

About five years ago, Liesl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller launched the Buy Nothing Project (buynothingproject.org), in an effort to encourage people to give away what they don't need and ask for what they need rather than to purchase it. The two founders launched the project from Bainbridge Island, Wash., and used a Facebook group to connect givers and takers.
Because the founders strive to establish what they call "hyper-local gift economies," other Buy Nothing groups have launched on Facebook in thousands of different locations. The founders set out some rules of engagement, the chief of which is that "dishonesty will not be tolerated."
Those giving stuff away post an item with a description online and those interested express interest. The giver gets to decide who among those interested gets the item and gives instructions for pick up. The substantial list of rules holds that individuals can belong to only one group and it must be in a community in which they live.
A quick perusal of my local group includes everything from boxing gloves to a complete IKEA Stuva loft bed. Items are quickly snapped up with new items being posted regularly.
A reader we're calling Phillipe, alerted me to his participation in one such group. He noticed that a lot of stuff being offered was the kind of stuff that sold well at his neighborhood's annual yard sale.
"There's no guarantee I'll be chosen as the recipient," writes Phillipe. "But if I get some of the stuff and stockpile it, I can make a few bucks by re-selling it."
Phillipe doesn't want to get kicked out of the group for breaking the rules. But he also has no idea if anyone would catch on to what he was doing if he did it.
Since the groups are designed to be hyper-local, it's not unreasonable to think that some people who posted items on Phillipe's Buy Nothing group might notice them up for sale at the local yard sale. If people finding out about his re-selling of items is enough of a concern to stop him from his plan, then he should re-think whether he wants to go forward. 
If Phillipe had done his due diligence, he would have found that on the long list of frequently asked questions on the Buy Nothing website, it's made clear that no limits are placed on what people do with the items they get as long as it's legal and they don't engage in dishonesty. Re-selling is not against the rules.
Of course, as noted, some posters might see their posted items among those Phillipe is selling at the local yard sale and spread the word that posters might want to avoid choosing him as the recipient in the future. When something is designed to be this hyper-local, people are often up in one another's business.
The right thing is for Phillipe to decide if the risk of being ostracized by some on his local Buy Nothing page is worth his plan. If he determines it is worth it, then he should not be dishonest about why he would like the goods and go ahead with his plan. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Choose not to lie

Just about 20 years ago, Bill Clinton apologized for all he "had done wrong in words and deeds." He went on to say that he never should have misled the country, Congress, his friends, or his family. He said the reason for his deceitfulness about an affair with an intern was that he had given in to his shame.
A week after apologizing, on Dec. 19, 1998, Clinton was impeached by the U.S. Congress. On Feb. 12, of the following year, he was acquitted of all charges by the U.S. Senate. Clinton remained in office and served out his second term. He was only the second president of the United States to be impeached by Congress. (The first was Andrew Johnson in 1868. He was also acquitted.)
The week after Clinton delivered his apology, I wrote acolumn about the consequences lying can have. I wasn't focusing on the consequences to those who lie, although being impeached can certainly leave a stain. Instead, I wrote: "When a culture of lying with impunity is perceived to have taken hold at the top, it bodes ill for behavior in the rest of an organization."
If people at the top send the message that it's acceptable to lie, regardless of the reasons, it sets the tone for loyal followers or determined opponents.
Sisela Bok, the author of Lying: Moral Choices inPublic and Private Life (Vintage Books, 1989) clarified for me at the time that being truthful and refraining from lying doesn't necessitate disclosing everything to everyone all the time. "There's great room for discretion, for knowing when not to speak," she said.
I was reminded of Bok's comments recently after SebastianStockman, a former student who is now an associate teaching professor at Northeastern University, tweeted some passages from Bok's book on lying, observing that it is "fullof bangers."
"Human beings ... provide for each other the most ingenious obstacles to what partial knowledge and minimal rationality they can hope to command," Bok wrote.
She observed that the "whole truth is out of reach. But this fact has very little to do with our choices about whether to lie or to speak honestly, about what to say and what to hold back."
We can find any number of reasons to lie, but these rarely result because of our inability to know the whole truth about any situation.
While it seems as if we are being more bombarded by lies than ever before, lying is nothing new. With each incidence, however, these lies erode our trust in the people who live with us, work with us, or lead us.
If possible, challenge those who do lie. If it's a boss who regularly lies, decide if it's time to seek employment elsewhere. If it's an elected official who lies, register to vote and work to vote him or her out of office.
But first, when faced with the temptation to lie, don't. Even if you have a gift for lying and convincing others of your lies. Even if your personal life or career have seemed wildly successful, choose not to lie.
Each lie told has consequences, if not for the person committing the lie, then for those of us who are subjected to those lies. 
Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues. 
Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net. 
F ollow him on Twitter: @jseglin  
(c) 2018 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.