Taking the Ethical High Road: Sometimes it means “taking one for the team”
Posted by Geoff Alexander on Mon, Oct 05, 2009 @ 01:13 AM
You know that I like to occasionally pontificate on ethical issues, like treating people the way you'd like to be treated, or doing the best thing to make our clients' lives better. But sometimes, in doing so, it takes money out of our pockets. I call that "taking one for the team." And that's what today's post is all about.
Sometimes it costs us to do the right thing. I was fortunate enough to work for some really ethical companies. One of them, Atron, a company that sold hardware-based testing tools, allowed me as a salesperson to authorize the return of any equipment I'd sold that didn't make my customers 100% happy. In having that policy, we sold a lot of product and got a reputation for being honest. And that loyalty brought us tons of business.
But it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes you do the right thing, but the stars don't line up, and you're the bad guy or gal. And you just have to take the "high road" and just have the philosophy that sometimes the best intentions fail. But if you fail for all the right reasons, is it still failure? Maybe not.
Here are two stories from my own world. Do either of these situations resonate with you?
1) One of my telesales training clients was one of the best-known names in the computer industry. They asked me to train 50 or so of their lead development reps, which were managed at an outsource bureau hundreds of miles away from the home office. So these reps were not actual employees of my client; they worked at a subcontracting firm. I traveled to meet the outsource management team and some of the reps. The reps told me confidentially how bad the working conditions were. And I confirmed it: the reps were being annoyed by management to the point of abuse, and no training in the world was going to improve their confidence level. To a person, the reps wanted to leave, and were all actively searching for other opportunities with other companies. It was truly the outsource bureau from hell, and I'd never experienced a worse work situation in our industry. So I returned and told the client what I'd found, and that I wasn't going to take the training contract. With working conditions as bad as they were, I told my client that he'd be wasting his money on training until either the management conditions were fixed there, or he found another bureau. My client wanted me to reconsider, but I felt that no amount of money was worth taking the job in the present condition. And I didn't want my client to waste his money, either.
2) In another situation with an equally well-known company, I was asked by my client, a middle manager there, to begin interviewing potential inside sales reps that would shortly be hired to sell a software solution that would soon be coming out of engineering. This consulting project called for an overview and recommendations for setting up a telesales department, but not specifically to interview candidates. In this consulting project, because my client was going on vacation, he asked that I not divulge what we were doing, if asked, to his Director, because this was going "under the radar." Naturally, two days after my client left for vacation, the Director called me in for an ad hoc meeting and warned me not to interview people. So what did I do? I went home and quit the project. Later, my client called me, upset that I'd quit. One problem was that I couldn't tell him I'd quit because I didn't trust him. But that was the reason.
In both of these situations, I walked away from significant projects because they were ethically screwed up. Also in both cases, much to my chagrin, the client ended up disliking me because I left. These still eat at me a bit because I always figure there might have been a way to salvage the relationship with these managers. But I don't regret for one minute pulling out of those projects.
I'm writing about this because we're in tough economic times today (hey, if you've got enough bills to pay, times are always tough economically). We all need to make money, and the companies we work for need to see their bottom lines improve, too. But there's occasionally something lurking around the corner that's going to pay us money, but just doesn't feel right. I'm not going to provide examples, because I'm sure you can come up with one or two on your own. When you make ethical decisions that cost you money, you take a short term loss. But you'll feel good that you made a tough decision for the right reasons, and you'll have a reputation that can't be bought with money. So go out and have a great Quarter, and add making tough ethical decisions to your Best Practices Playbook.