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

Take Care of Your Company and Its Customers

Immediately after your own interests come the interests of your organization. You must do your best to protect your company from any harm whatsoever and to continually act in its best interest. Sometimes, this requires that you act as the company’s conscience to protect it from itself!

At the very least, you must protect your company from participating in illegal behavior. Better yet, you can try to keep its members from committing immoral and unethical actions, although different people will have contrary opinions about what “the right thing to do” is. Will jobs or profits be protected? Does environmental protection trump economic development? Which would you rather see, rigid compliance to a zealous regulator or obsessive adherence to a purist’s idea of consumer rights? No one said that any of these were easy decisions, which is why the very conversations about ethics in the Ethical Office are so helpful. You may not always arrive at the perfect answer, but you’ll have a much better chance of reaching consensus.

Your company deserves your loyalty on an ethical front purely because it provides you with a livelihood by giving you a paycheck. Practically, your company can demand your loyalty because it is more powerful than you, your managers, your coworkers, your union, your customers, and your suppliers. The company itself will remain long after you and whatever problem you’re facing have gone away. In a dispute, your company will be ...