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

The Martha Stewart Trial

Many people followed the insider trading trial of domesticity diva Martha Stewart—a scandal that served as a wake-up call for all administrative staff. These professionals were particularly riveted to the travails of their peer, Doug Faneuil, who was suddenly thrust into the middle of a no-win ethical dilemma that the poor guy was forced to play out on the world stage. Faneuil worked at Merrill Lynch as executive assistant to Stewart’s broker, Peter Bacanovic. Originally, he backed both Stewart and Bocanovic’s stories. He later recanted and admitted to prosecutors that he had indeed lied for his boss.

Almost overnight, Faneuil became the government’s star witness in trials against his boss and one of his boss’s biggest clients, both of whom were charged with lying to securities investigators about why Stewart dumped her ImClone stock.

There were likely many employees who felt a collective chill when they heard Faneuil claim during testimony that he was pressured into lying about what his boss said and did—and felt equally sympathetic (not to mention anxious) when he admitted his role in covering up those lies because “I felt I would be fired if I didn’t lie.” Perhaps instinctively, Faneuil believed his defense could be a simple statement: “My boss told me to do it!” After all, it worked for Fawn Hall, Colonel Oliver North’s assistant, when, during the Iran-Contra hearings in the 1980s, Hall explained why she shredded documents and smuggled them out of North’s ...