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

We All Have Regrets

Jean was a Midwestern secretary who worked for the fund-raising arm of a nonprofit operation. Her specialty was planned gifts, and the executive she worked for was an attorney. Her organization encourages donors to seek their own attorney’s counsel for document preparation during the estate planning process. One particular donor, who procrastinated in having her will made out, was, according to Jean, “sort of coerced into signing a will we made out for her.” Jean’s boss asked her to prepare a will for the elderly woman to sign and put their organization in it for $50,000, which she did, and “we became beneficiaries of this gift.” At her boss’s request, Jean destroyed all evidence “that we drew up the will.” She was also instructed to have “no memory of this situation.” Jean claimed to have a good relationship with her boss and that she “always did what he asked.” Despite the fact that she knew at the time that what she was doing was wrong, she went ahead and followed her boss’s instructions. The elderly woman died, and Jean’s organization received its gift accordingly. However, Jean will forever have regrets that she did not object to her boss’s request. She also realizes now that, if the family ever contested the will, “I could be taken into court for questioning.” Jean considers this to have been a substantial ethical, moral, and legal lapse in her judgment.

Mark was chief operating officer of an engineering firm. He told me that he once “sat in the CEO’s ...