You've Got to Be Kidding!: How to Keep Your Job Without Losing Your Integrity

We Grow Ethically as We Mature (Thank Heaven)

People will continue to grow ethically as long as they continue to be challenged. One of my favorite stories about maturing is the father who devised a method of disciplining his young son. Whenever the boy was naughty, he had to drive a nail in the fence. Whenever he was good, the boy was allowed to remove a nail. Simple rules, right? One day, the boy noticed that the fence was all full of holes and looked bad. He remarked about this to his father and said, “I can take the nails out, but I can’t remove the holes” (an important observation). His dad was wise to point out that, although we may balance our mistakes with good deeds, sometimes the mistakes still leave their mark.

This potential for predictable moral growth is the single best hope for building a more ethical office environment. Questioning and discussing the ethical dilemmas that take place in the office prompts everyone who participates to move a little further toward their next stage of development.

So there is hope! The ethical dilemmas you are thrashing out this year with your supervisors, peers, and coworkers are actually helping people grow, which hopefully means you will not have to deal with the same dilemmas next year. There’s still no guarantee that your boss will “see the light” and stop submitting bogus expense reports on her own; after all, she has her own set of values. But as you learn to identify and handle these dilemmas better, your boss’s ethics might ...