Jeffrey L. Seglin's Blog, page 73

The check may or may not be in the mail

Last fall, a reader was working as the personal assistant to an author who ran a regular series of writing workshops. The reader's primary task was to help select and edit pieces of writing from various workshop participants that would be published as a book.
She dutifully set about the task and sent off a completed manuscript to the printer. When the pages came back from the printer to be proofread, my reader and her boss noticed many errors they had missed before sending the book off to the printer. Neither of them are professional copyeditors "by any stretch," my reader says. So she took it upon herself to make sure to hire someone to proofread the pages properly.
Because the errors were caught at this later stage of the production process, the author owed the printer an additional $300 to fix the mistakes before the final books were produced.
"As the editor, I felt responsible for this error and gave my boss a check to cover the expense," my reader says. A couple of weeks later the author called my reader to tell her that the check wasn't necessary and that she had torn it up. My reader chalked that up as "a very kind gesture."
Three months later, my reader was offered a new job. She gave her boss a month's notice. They agreed that instead of drawing her regular salary for the final month, she would invoice her for the specific hours she worked.
She submitted her final invoice for $150. No payment arrived. When she saw her boss, she told her that she would put the check in the mail. More weeks passed and still no check. My reader then contacted her former boss's assistant who handles her finances to see when the check would be sent.
That assistant responded that because the boss had never cashed the $300 check my reader had given her, she would like to "call it even." The other assistant ended by apologizing for being the bearer of this news and asked my reader, "Let me know what you think."
"I feel hurt and frustrated by this arrangement," my reader tells me. "We had a verbal agreement that she was not going to accept the $300."
"What is the right thing to do in this situation?" she asks. "Which of us is in the wrong?"
Not once, but twice did the former boss commit to not holding my reader responsible for the $300 in extra printing costs. First, when she told her she was tearing up the check. And then again when she told her the check would be in the mail for the money owed.
The boss was in the wrong not to pay what she owed.
The right thing is for my reader to let the former boss's other assistant know exactly what she thinks and to tell her that an agreement is an agreement, that it is not OK for the boss to renege on her financial commitment, and that she expects to be paid. And the right thing for the former boss is to get a check into the mail for the money she owes as soon as possible.
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) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

When you meet the racists on the road, correct their usage

There's a U.S. presidential campaign bumper sticker making the rounds that at once purports to take advantage of free speech while at the same time devolving into racist taunting.
In an attempt to play on the word "renege," the bumper sticker shouts out "Don't Renege in 2012," only renege is deliberately misspelled to use a racial epithet. See how clever? The makers of the bumper sticker picked up on what they believed to be a double-entendre.
The problem, aside from the ugly racist undertone, is that the way the bumper sticker is worded, it actually seems to call on people not to reverse - not to renege on--the vote they made for Barack Obama in 2012. (There's small type on the bumper sticker that's more specifically anti-Obama, but who can read the small type from a car's length away?)
It's unclear if masses of people are actually putting these bumper stickers on their cars. The photo posted on Facebook, The Huffington Post and elsewhere all seem to feature the bumper sticker plastered on the back of a gray vehicle that also features a promotional decal for a well-known brand of shotgun.
People posting pictures of the bumper sticker are asking their readers and followers for their opinion. Or, as in the case of a friend whose post was the first I saw, they're just writing an observation like "Sigh" without further comment.
One question that looms large is whether those who might see the bumper sticker should say something to the person who's placed it on his or her vehicle. Just as those using the bumper sticker have a right to free speech, surely others who find it offensive have an equal right to freely speak to how offensive they find the words.
So, what's the right thing to do?
If you harbor a strong feeling about just how offensive something is, the right thing to do is to speak up.
It's no different if you find yourself in a setting when someone offers a joke that is racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, homophobic or anything else that you believe goes against your core beliefs about what is appropriate discourse. If you don't find the joke funny, it's acceptable to tell the teller that you find such jokes offensive. Doing that upon the first telling (these jokes tend to come in multiples spread over time) establishes that while someone has a right to spew such stuff, you would prefer that he or she not do it in your company.
Those who display such bumper stickers should know that there are people who find them offensive.
Granted, the accompanying sticker for a shotgun manufacturer might give you some trepidation. So, use your judgment in deciding how you deliver your response.
My suggestion would be to let the motorist know - from a far-enough distance - that you don't plan to renege on your vote in 2012, that you do plan to change how you voted, or that you never voted for the fellow in the first place - but that regardless of your political leanings, racist language does little to advance whatever his cause might be.
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) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Nothing is more powerful than knowledge

When my 13-year-old grandson sent me a link to a YouTube video about Joseph Kony, the video already had been viewed 20 million times. It was posted by the not-for-profit, Invisible Children. Its stated goal was to raise awareness about Kony, a war criminal who has led the Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel group in Africa, since 1987.
The well-produced video tells a moving story about 30,000 children kidnapped over the past several decades. There's a message to contact influential politicians and celebrities to ask them to help bring awareness and an end to Kony.
By the time I viewed the Kony video, articles had been posted online calling into question exactly what Invisible Children was asking viewers to do, asking whether the video oversimplified the issue, and also closely examining the not-for-profit's 990-form, the disclosure that every not-for-profit in the U.S. has to file annually with the Internal Revenue Service. The backlash was swift and strong, questioning the group's finances and indicating its intentions may be misguided. By the time I went to bed that night, the video had been viewed more than 37 million times.
Fueled partly by teenage enthusiasm, a lot of attention was being paid. Teenagers tweeted their friends and emailed their parents. Word spread.
No one involved in the back-and-forth has questioned whether Kony is a war criminal who should be stopped. The questions have revolved mostly around whether there is something suspect about the operations of this not-for-profit.
Rebecca Rosen, a writer for The Atlantic, addressed head on what happens if those teenagers who got caught up in the frenzy to help to engage in a collective good act somehow feel they were duped. "In the end, the people (teenagers) who spread this video were motivated by a desire to help, no matter how misguided and problematic the organization behind it," she writes. "It is easy to be cynical, but the desire to do good by your fellow person is widespread."
What the Invisible Children's "Stop Kony" campaign shows us, in addition to the power of a well-orchestrated social media campaign, is the responsibility each of us has to learn about the causes with which we get involved. There is no charge to view the 990 financial disclosure forms that firms like www.guidestar.org make available for most not-for-profits in the U.S. The operation of not-for-profits, such as Invisible Children, are rated on www.charitynavigator.org - also available for viewing at no charge.
The right thing for anyone trying to sort through the positive and negative response to the Invisible Children campaign - as with any not-for-profit with which you are contemplating engagement - is to learn as much as possible about the organization so you are able to make an informed decision. The information is out there and simple to find. Once informed, whether or not to commit to an organization and its efforts is your choice.
As I am filing this column with my editor, the "Kony 2012" video has been viewed 70,624,061 times. This seems a great teaching moment - not to tell teenagers what to do, but to help them think critically about the decisions they make. 
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) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Must you fully disclose what the future might bring?

Comedian David Brenner used to tell a joke about lying awake at night when he heard mosquitoes buzzing, fearful that he would get bitten. Then he remembered reading somewhere that only male mosquitoes buzz and that they don't bite. He then figured he could relax whenever he heard buzzing. But, he punch-lined, it's when he heard nothing he knew he had to worry.
It's a joke that plays on the impossibility of knowing the unknowable, but a desire nevertheless to control the outcome. (Forget for a second that while male mosquitoes indeed don't bite, both the male and female do apparently make a buzzing sound. Brenner didn't let this fact stand in the way of a good joke.)
How do you make a decision about doing the right thing when unknowable variables involved?
A reader from the Midwest tells me that he might be changing jobs and relocating to the Northeast sometime over the next several months. He loves his current job, but there's potential for a great opportunity. While he's a finalist for the new job, he hasn't been offered it yet, so he's not 100 percent sure he'll be moving away. He expects to hear within the next two to three weeks.
As his future is up in the air, he finds himself being offered positions of increasing importance, most recently to serve as a board member for a foundation in his current city. If he accepts the board seat, he knows there's a better than even chance he will have to resign the position and inconvenience the rest of the board which will soon have to replace him. On the other hand, should he limit his participation on this board - and with other local opportunities - on the chance that he will relocate?
"If I don't move, I've cut myself off from some opportunities by saying no to the chances," he says. "If I say yes and do move, I'm running the risk of being perceived as duplicitous of misleading."
He wants to know if it would be wrong to accept the board position knowing there's a chance he may soon move away.
If it's a board with which he really wants to work and he believes he can do some good, then I believe he should proceed with the opportunity to serve on the board and not cut himself off from such opportunities entirely.
Since he is expecting to hear about the new job offer within a few weeks, the right thing is to let the foundation members know that he needs a few weeks to consider their offer. That will give him time to find out if he's gotten the new job. If he gets the job and plans to take it, he can turn down the offer to sit on the board or let the members know of the offer and that since he would be leaving the region within a few months, he feels it best to decline the offer. That gives the board the opportunity to respond with either a thank you, or a request that he give them whatever time he has over the next few months.
But he needn't give a response until the silence about his prospective position turns into an audible buzz.
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) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Ambiguous policies make for confused employees

Occasionally, when I give an assignment to a class, I ask them to execute the assignment in a particular order.
"Choose a target publication for the article you're writing," the assignment might start, "and then study that publication and develop your article specifically for its audience."
Of course, once they've written their articles, I have no real way to tell if they did it in the order I asked. I just set the rules, ask them to follow them and trust that they will.
But my goal is to make sure that they know what my expectations and desires are for the assignment.
In a business setting, when bosses don't make the rules clear, employees might end up either fearing for their jobs because of an unintended rules violation or they might take advantage of the ambiguity to their own favor.
A reader is facing such ambiguity at her workplace.
After a small retail business was sold to new owners, she writes, many of the old-time employees continued to take advantage of a discount in place under the former owners. The old policy allowed only for discounts to employees, not to family or friends.
My reader is a newer employee, although she started before the business changed hands. She believes that the discount given to employees may be being given to members of employees' families without the owner's knowledge.
"All of the other employees take advantage of the discount for their family members as a sort of wink, wink practice," she writes. "I find this practice dishonest."
Her son tells her that she should just keep quiet and let the new owners find out for themselves what is going on.
"This just doesn't seem right," she writes. "But when I think of saying anything to the new owners, I feel really disloyal to the other employees. What should I do?"
My reader is not certain that other employees are extending the employee discount beyond themselves. She strongly suspects that they are, however.
Since the new owners have not made any statement about the status of the employee discount, my reader has a perfect opportunity to address her concern while minimizing the risk of being disloyal to her fellow employees.
The right thing for her to do is to ask the new owners for clarification about the policy for herself. She needn't bring up her suspicions when she asks, but merely can pose the question about the policy and whether it extends to family members as well.
The right thing for the new owners is to make the discount policy clear.
Of course, employees may say they are buying something for themselves when they really are buying them for family members, but unless the owners place a limit of how many discounts you can take in a given time period, there's no real way to police what employees do with the stuff once they buy it. In the best of all worlds, the owners would be clear on the policy and employees would have the integrity to honor the rules.
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 . 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.  

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Browsing friend is not a thief

"Am I a thief?"
When someone asks if they're a thief, an instinctual response is: "Well, if you have to ask. . ." But gut instinct doesn't always yield the best answers. A reader poses the question because, well, her friend called her one.
The cause for the charge centers on a topic regularly raised by readers who write me: Is it wrong to make use of things at a bookstore cafe without paying for them?
Several years ago, I responded to a reader from a leafy suburb of Boston who thought the woman who sat and read a newspaper while drinking her coffee and then refolded the paper and returned it to the rack to be sold was wrong. That coffee shop had a sign that asked readers not to read newspapers before paying for them. I weighed in that the customer was indeed wrong to read without paying.
A reader in Southern California worried she was overstepping by holding small meetings at her local bookstore cafe without all meeting attendees always buying something to imbibe while there. Since some of the folks did always make purchases, I saw no fault in the group's actions.
Now, comes the alleged thief from Ohio.
"On a regular basis, I frequent a large nationally known bookstore to sit and relax," writes the perpetrator. "When I am there, I will read the current magazines that I find interesting. On very rare occasions, I will purchase one that I may find extra interesting. And most of the time I will purchase coffee to sip on when I am relaxing and reading the magazines."
Her friend believes she's a thief. "I have never thought of it that way," she writes. "Am I stealing?
Upon discussing the matter further with the suspect, I discover that there is no sign prohibiting customers from reading publications unless they purchase them, that she returns them to the shelf in pristine condition, and that she purchases coffee 99 percent of the time she sits to read a magazine. While she reads a wide variety of publications including those on home decor, outdoor recreation, health, knitting, crafts and photography, she only buys two or three magazines a year. Her friend tells her that what she's doing is no different from going to the grocery store and eating the food there without paying for it.
The friend's comparison doesn't hold since once you eat the food, it can't very well be returned to the shelf to be sold to a paying customer.
But a larger point is that the bookstore cafe has a right to set whatever policy it wants for its customers. If the management believes that allowing customers to browse magazines while drinking coffee drives up coffee sales, then that's its call. Unlike the suburban customer who broke store policy, the reader from Ohio is doing nothing wrong.
Granted, it would be nice if she and others purchased magazines more frequently to support the business, but the right thing is to honor the rules of the establishment. My reader does this and her friend should back off and perhaps turn her attention to the grocery-sampling thieves who may indeed be stealing. 
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 . 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.  

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

The goal is integrity in the game

Several months ago, a reader emailed me a link to a story in his local newspaper about a high school football team that had been headed to the regional playoffs, but ended up forfeiting two games because an ineligible player had been in the game. His transgression was that he hadn't turned in a required documentation for a physical examination.
Somehow, the coaches missed the fact that his paperwork was not in order until just before they were to head off to the regional playoffs. The school's athletic director, who caught the mistake, knew the rules and decided to report the incident. In spite of appeals to forgive the transgression, the team was forced to forfeit two games - which gave it a record that dropped it from contention.
"The issue, as I see it," my reader writes, "is this: Is it always ethical to be so ethical?"
He wonders where our first ethical loyalties lie.
"Certainly it was the athletic director's responsibility to make sure that all the paperwork was in order, but his mea culpa over the error had results that were described in the newspaper as 'getting jail time for jaywalking.'"
My reader believes it's a "splendid thing to be so honest." But, he wonders if "maybe it's better, sometimes, to keep your mouth shut when exposure of your error affects so many people who had no hand in it."
The story reminds me of a disagreement I once was asked to referee between a segment producer on a local news program and her news anchor. She had told him about the time she was playing field hockey in an important college game and a goal was scored by her team illegally (something to do with accidentally kicking the ball in the goal rather than striking it with the field hockey stick). The referees didn't notice that the goal was scored illegally so they initially ruled it a goal. The segment producer had hesitated a moment, but then pointed out that the goal, which would have put her team up by a point, was illegal. The referees reversed their ruling and the goal did not count.
The news anchor, a former sports anchor at a different station in town, thought she was wrong to point out the referee's mistake. She thought she was right, even though her team suffered as a result.
I sided with her. She showed real integrity by recognizing an error, taking action to correct that error, and articulating why she did what she did. She wanted her team to win fair and square, not on what she believed to be a violation of the rules of the game.
Her team went on to win the game.
The high school football team's athletic director also was right to point out the error once he caught it. His team didn't fare so well. Still, he acted with integrity by ultimately not turning a blind eye to what he knew was a violation of the rules.
Of course, the right thing would have been for the athletic director and his staff to have been more scrupulous about making sure all of their players' paperwork was in order in the first place. Given the outcome of the experience, it's a mistake he and his staff are likely never to make again.
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 . 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.  

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Before questioning someone's reputation, check your facts

In a casual conversation with a friend, a reader learns that a local honcho at a not-for-profit organization might not have the credentials he claims.

The friend has known the honcho for 40 years or so. She is a former faculty member at the college from which the honcho says he graduated. She claims that he dropped out before earning any of the degrees he says he earned.

"I very seriously doubt that she would make up this information," my reader writes. He believes the honcho has duped the not-for-profit and the community it serves.

The registrar for the college verified that the honcho did graduate. In fact, my reader is told he graduated with distinction.

"I have a strong suspicion that somebody has fiddled with the records," writes my reader, convinced that his friend would never give him misinformation. "Nobody seems interested in verifying the information. What should I do?"

In addition to the registrar, the honcho's former wife, as well as a friend of his, insist to my reader that the guy did graduate. But my reader is having none of it. "I still don't believe it," he writes. He plans to continue his hunt for the truth.

My reader's instinct to want to make sure that a community is not being defrauded is not a bad one - but by the time he asks the honcho's friend and former wife, he has already spread unconfirmed information.

"I would not like to have him sue me for blowing the whistle on him," my reader writes. "He is a fraud."

You can't blame the guy for not liking a fraud and wanting him exposed. But again, he still doesn't know if his friend's facts are correct and he's now got the word of two people and the college registrar that the honcho didn't lie about his record.

There's an old saw that reporters have shared with newcomers for years: "If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out."

Before he started talking to others about the honcho's credentials, my reader had failed to check with his original source: the friend who raised the issue in the first place.

He emailed her to verify what she told him and to tell her that his checking contradicted her claim. Her email arrived the next morning: "I did not say that," she wrote.

"Now I'm in the position of having to decide if I want to have a friend who lies to me," my reader writes.

For whatever reason she chose to drop the bomb that this honcho was fabricating his background, the friend was wrong. But before spreading that concern to others, the right thing for my reader to do was to confirm with her that she indeed intended to say what she said - to check the facts with the original source.

Short of that, getting confirmation from the registrar should have been enough for him to return to the original friend who made the comment and ask her to confirm her observation rather than begin asking others and thus raising concern about the honcho further.

In thinking he was trying to right a wrong, my reader went too far. It was his friend's comments he should have been checking out rather than the recipient of her barbs. 

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 . 

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.  

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

You don't need to buy me a beer to answer your questions

A typewritten letter from a reader arrived through the mail. I receive far more correspondence via email than I do through the post office, but I do try to respond to readers regardless of how they contact me. When a reader takes the time to type a letter, the least I could do is offer a response.
But this letter is special. The writer opens with some gracious notes about the column, followed by: "I ask that you write about the two questions I enclose even if you have to do so on separate occasions."
The first question is whether it is OK for someone who has the monetary means to deliberately try to annoy a neighbor by parking a car near his home that has a beeper timed to go off every six seconds. The second questions the ethics of advice columnists who advise spouses to "apply for a divorce at once" after discovering their partner has done something egregious. "What about the rest of us?" my letter writer asks. He wonders what happens after the miscreant ex-spouse is set free. Who will protect the rest of us, he asks. "How, and who, should put the bell on the cat?" If the advice guru advises cutting the spouse loose, he wonders, isn't it the guru's responsibility to supply the bell?
Somewhat quirky, but not totally outlandish questions. What follows though is more of a challenge.
"I enclose a check in the amount of $10 as a motivator (some beer money?)." He also encloses two self-addressed, stamped envelopes so I can send him a clipping of the articles in which I respond to his questions.
Granted, 10 bucks would give me enough for three Narragansett beers and cover the tax and tip as well at my neighborhood bar andgrill. But by enclosing the check with his two questions, the letter writer presents me with a bigger question: Should I base the topics I respond to in the column on how much readers are willing to pay me to choose their questions?
There's clearly nothing wrong with paying for advice. Doctors, therapists, lawyers and any number of other professionals are regularly paid for their advice. Why not shoot a reader's issues to the front of the queue if he's willing to pony up 10 or a thousand bucks (just to quibble over price) as a little incentive?
It's not accepting money for advice that would be wrong. It's the lack of transparency.
If other readers are under the assumption that any questions I use in the column are chosen based on merit (albeit my subjective sense of what would make for an interesting column) and not on any compensation aside from what I earn from the publications that carry the column, then it is wrong to take money from readers if I don't disclose that, as we used to say in Boonton, N.J., where I grew up, "Money talks, nobody walks."
The right thing is not to cash the letter writer's check. And so, it's been returned to him in the mail. As for his questions, I may answer them down the road on their own merits. In the meantime, I'll pay for my own beer.

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 .

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.

Whom do I go to for advice? And whom don't I?

I'm not the only person who writes a regular column on ethical issues.
But awhile back, I pointed out that when facing my own ethical issues, I had no one to write to for ethical guidance. "It would be a conflict of interest to write to a competing columnist," I said.
A reader in Columbus, Ohio, took issue. Frankly, he didn't understand my point about not being able to write to a competing columnist.
"Why wouldn't you use another columnist and his or her expertise to answer an ethical question (whether it was about you or from a reader)? It seems to me that the service you provide should give the questioner the best possible solution with an adequate explanation of how you got to such a recommendation. If the goal is to 'do the right thing,' why not use all the resources you might have?"
He explained that as a doctor, he regularly referred patients to other internists when he felt he wasn't solving their medical issues. 'The goal is to get at what will work best for the patient."
Likewise, he asks, isn't it the ethical thing for a columnist to ask an expert, even if that expert is a competitor?
The doctor is right that outside experts are critical to anyone who dispenses advice. Several years ago, Amy Dickinson, who writes the"Ask Amy" column, called to ask my advice about an employee who wrote that she worked at a company whose owners "sanctioned" managers expensing thousands of dollars of trips to "gentleman's clubs." (Both Dickinson's column and mine are syndicated by Tribune Media Services, but when she called, I worked for a competing syndicate.) Dickinson contacted me because I've written and taught about business ethics. (She and I agreed the office manager should find a new place to work.)
But Dickinson didn't call me to do her job for her. She presumably called because she wanted to talk it over with someone who wrotemore frequently about workplace ethics.
I make similar calls regularly to folks who are experts in a field beyond my expertise - whether it's local administrators who know the regulations on who owns fruit on a tree that sits in a person's yard but overhangs a public walkway, or whether alcohol in baked goods actually burns off or remains in the cake or myriad issues in between.
I also talk regularly to a wide variety of people who work in ethics to get input on the type of responses I make to reader questions.
What I don't believe is right, however, is to avail myself of the opinion of other columnists who cover the same turf as I do and then use their wisdom to come up with my own solutions to various issues posed. It feels too much like trying to impress dinner guests by ordering takeout from a fine dining establishment and then foisting the food off on them as my own creation.
The reader from Columbus is absolutely correct that the right thing is for me to avail myself of the resources I need to provide readers with the best information possible in the column. But the right thing for me is to draw the line in getting those who compete with me to do my work for me. Readers go to their columns for their insights, and to mine for mine.
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 .

Do you have ethical questions that you need answered? Send them to rightthing@comcast.net.

(c) 2012 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by Tribune MediaServices, Inc.