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

The Trouble with Talking to Your Boss

In a perfect world, genteel conversations would be all that were required to solve all our ethical dilemmas. All bosses would be nice, logical, and reasonable people who shared common values with you, and who were just as interested as you are in doing the right thing.

In the real world, however, your boss may be part of the problem. Because you work so closely—and she’s higher on the office food chain—it’s likely that many or most of your dilemmas will actually come from her. For example:

• Your manager starts the problem by either behaving unethically and/or asking you to do something unethical.
• Your manager tolerates the problem, thereby making it worse. Here are a few such responses:
  • “It’s not your job to worry about this.”
  • “It’s not my job to worry about that.”
  • “The law does not require us to be concerned with that.”
  • “I can’t because _______________ (fill in the excuse).”
  • “I’m paid for getting the right results, not using the right process.”
  • “I don’t want to rock the boat; let’s go along to get along.”
  • Or the classic, “This is just the way we do things around here.” And its close cousins, “We’ve always done it like this” and “It’s just the way it is.”
• Your manager ignores or minimizes the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. This response is one of denial and/or attacking the messenger (which would unfortunately be you). This sounds like:
  • “I don’t believe you.”
  • “It’s not that bad.”
  • “If it’s such a big deal, let human resources handle ...