㊙️Psst. True story time...
😱The absence of workplace ethics in some workplaces has never stopped worrying me. Early in my career I decided, I'd rather walk away from a pay day than participate in fraud, exploitation, and/or corruption. Apparently, I'm strange like that...
📉In tech, as a performance analyst, I was asked to falsify the data for a large leadgeneration event led by a US-based team. The event cost a fortune but was VERY poorly attended. Shockingly, it had cost $96,000 per attendee (that number remains seared in my mind for all time).
🧮I was ordered by my boss to "find better numbers" and while I tried and tried to falsify this awful finding, this was the (bitter and inescapable) truth. My bosses' solution? My analysis was removed from the formal report, and ...disappeared.
🏃🏼♂️I left this role months later. This wasn't the first time I was ordered to fudge data to fit a preferred narrative.
🈶In the consumer services sector, I was alerted to a false advertising issue that was harming our most vulnerable customers. I investigated, found the complaints were 💯 true. I designed a replacement program.
🛑When I presented the matter and its solution to my boss, I was ordered to stop talking about it. The program had been in place for years before I started, and according to him, the unethical program "worked" and brought in significant , fraud or no.
🏃🏼♂️I left that job a few months later ...but on the way out I delivered everything to my exec team.
⚠️In the education sector, I was asked to create a learning object that collected mental health info about students, including whether or not a student was feeling suicidal. (And no, this was NOT mental health course).
🚸I felt sick to my stomach at the request, and explained that this was NOT something an industry-standard instructional design tool could or SHOULD ever do.
🏃🏼♂️I resigned from this client weeks later. This wasn't the first horrific thing he said. I know I will never compromise student privacy, or safety for any price.
🤼I always knew intuitively that you are only as ethical as the company you keep. If you work for unscrupulous, unethical people, then every day you'll be in a pitch battle preserve your integrity, ...and your human decency.
🧭In some work cultures, my leadership teams loved my honest takes and ethical compass. In these cultures, leaders didn't want to be surrounded by normless, unprincipled sycophants who told them what they wanted to hear. In other work cultures, my best and only move was to walk away.
⁉️I know what kind of workplace culture I prefer. What about you?
Coda: While I'd encourage you to normalize walking away like I did, I know most of us can't. Most institutions, and organizations seem to privilege the unethical, lawless maverick who "breaks things" over the ethical, steady worker. And I know the moral injuries we all face every day in the face of that reality...
Worried About the Ethics of Your Workplace? Me Too
If you work for unscrupulous, unethical people, then every day you'll be in a pitch battle preserve your integrity, ...and your human decency
Oct 25, 2024
Dr. Tanya Pobuda Precarious Podcast
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