Alexandra Levit's Water Cooler Wisdom

Are You More Ethical Than the Illinois Governor?

Reuters, along with every other high-profile media outlet in the country, reported this week that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and his chief of staff John Harris were arrested in Chicago on two counts each of federal corruption charges stemming from allegations Blagojevich was trying to sell President-elect Barack Obama's vacated Senate seat to the highest bidder.  The arrest is part of a three-year probe of "pay-to-play politics" in the governor's administration. The criminal complaint by the FBI says each man was arrested on two charges of conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. 

It never ceases to amaze me that politicians continue to behave unethically, even when they are almost always caught in the end.  As a regular citizen, you may think you’re immune to such ethical choices as the one faced by my esteemed governor.  But in reality, ethical decisions confront us in the professional world every day, whether it’s deciding to accept an expensive gift from a client or falsifying records in the name of company survival.  Peter Voyt, a longtime friend of mine, provides this quiz to get a sense of how your business ethics measure up. 

If you’re not happy with your results, you might consider checking out this useful primer from the Josephson Institute.  With realistic examples and a step-by-step decision making model, the easy-to-read booklet examines the hows and whys of making choices that withstand ethical scrutiny.  You can also learn to be on the lookout for dangerous rationalizations that cause ethical slip-ups, including “it’s legal,” “it’s okay if I don’t gain personally,” “it doesn’t hurt anyone,” and “everyone’s doing it.”

Free eBook: Gradspot Guide to Life After College

I recently had the chance to chat with Chris and Stuart, two enterprising twenty-somethings who founded Gradspot, which they hope will become the premiere online destination for life after college. They are super-impressive young professionals, having graduated from Harvard and Emory respectively and boasting work experience in the finance, technology, and publishing industries. The backbone of Gradspot is made up of Survival Guides organized into five categories: Apartment, Career, Lifestyle, Money, and Health. Chris and Stuart have also just published The Gradspot.com Guide to Life after College, and they were kind enough to send me a copy.

There are lots of books out there for new college graduates who have just crash-landed in the real world, but Chris and Stuart’s book is a refreshing addition to the genre, mainly because it’s clever without being silly or snarky. Peek inside the book and you’ll find:

• Tips and tricks culled for everything from handling an office romance to finding compatible roommates and switching your cell phone plan.
• Thoroughly researched solutions for the most common recent grad issues, developed not only from the experiences of Gradspot writers, but also from the opinions of topic experts and other recent grads.
• Fun, easy-to-navigate chapters that are perfect for flipping through when you, um, need to entertain/edify yourself for five minutes or so.
• “Confessions of a Match.com User,” “Confessions of a Nomad,” and other hilarious anecdotes from post-college life.
• Interviews (with rappers and Ph.D.s alike), exhibits, and top ten lists

The Gradspot.com Guide may be amusing, but it’s pretty serious in its mission to educate new grads. And best of all, if you’re a cash-strapped twenty-something in need of the personal finance tips offered in Chapter 5, you can get the book FOR FREE!

When New Years Resolutions Aren’t Resolute

Resolute (adj):  firmly resolved or determined; set in purpose or opinion.

Tomorrow begins a New Year, and as such, it is the time of New Years Resolutions. It’s a common joke that we Americans are very fond of making a list of items we want to achieve in the new year – from losing weight and getting in shape to taking a self-improvement course and looking for a new job - and then abandoning half these things come February.

Thinking about it, New Years Resolutions aren’t very resolute, because people are not firmly resolved or determine to do them. They just sound good in theory, so we make ourselves feel better about our lives by saying that we’ll take action when we have no real intention of doing so.

In the last year, I have listened to too many of my friends routinely complain about the circumstances of their lives, circumstances which they had resolved to change and then didn’t. It’s frustrating to witness, because these things are completely in their control. They’re the only ones who can transform their lives for the better, and yet they are held back by fear or inertia or laziness.

It probably won’t surprise you that I’m a huge fan of Ayn Rand, whose objectivism philosophy dictates that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest, with productive achievement as one’s noblest activity. Ayn would say that these friends of mine, especially those with dead-end jobs they refuse to leave, aren’t fulfilling their potential as human beings, and that they have a duty to make a couple of serious New Years Resolutions and then stick to them.

And if they don’t, they should at least quit whining about it, because they have no one to blame but themselves.

Arm Yourself Against Workplace Affairs

Anita Bruzzese over at 45 Things has an interesting post on workplace romance. While Anita does mention that 58 percent of us working folk have dated someone you work with and that she herself married someone she met on the job, it’s cool that she doesn’t spend the rest of the post chastising those who are currently in a relationship with a colleague. Instead, she does something that’s much more useful.  With help from mediator Barbara Reeves Neal, Anita provides some great tips for how those of us who are already married or seriously involved can keep workplace relationships strictly professional. Among them:

• No after hour meetings if they can be avoided. “Remind yourself of the family you have at home,” Neal says.
• No hotel room meetings. This can be slightly problematic when all the men – or all the women – want to meet in someone’s room and the one person of the opposite sex feels uncomfortable with it. Still, everyone should be understanding and hold all meetings in the hotel lobby or other meeting room. When traveling on business, stay away from dimly lit restaurants or bars.
• Remember that the “good feelings” you have working with that person are because you’re working towards a common goal. Don’t infuse the relationship with personal emotional attachment.

I have occasionally worried about what would happen if I were to unexpectedly meet someone through my work with whom I couldn’t resist starting an affair.  Hopefully by keeping this advice in the back of my mind, I’ll be able to deal with the situation effectively if it ever does come up.

How to Respond to Racism at Work

Penelope Trunk has an interesting post on responding to racist comments in a work situation, and she links over to a brilliant entry on the very useful blog, Race in the Workplace. The author, Carmen Van Kerckhove, is a consultant for New Demographic, an anti-racism training company.

I loved Carmen’s tips on the best way to respond to a racist joke, because I’ve often found myself in this situation (usually with superiors) and have had no idea how to handle it. According to Carmen, the best response to a racist joke should accomplish three things:

• Communicate that you find this behavior unacceptable.
• Demonstrate that the joke is racist.
• Inflict as little damage as possible to your working relationship with the joker.

How, you ask?  The best strategy, says Carmen, is to play dumb. Put on a bewildered expression, act as if you don’t understand the joke, and ask your co-worker to explain it to you. He will not be able to explain why the joke is funny without evoking a racist stereotype. You can then question the veracity of this stereotype, thus pointing out the racism of the joke, without being confrontational and without humiliating your co-worker.

In the past, I’ve responded to racist jokes simply by not laughing.  But Carmen says this is not effective, because while withholding your laughter is a way to avoid personally colluding in this kind of racist behavior without damaging your relationship with the joker, you do not necessarily make it clear that you find this kind of humor unacceptable and that the joke is racist.

I hope I DON’T have to try this strategy anytime soon, but I probably will, and I’ll be grateful for Carmen’s advice!

Amy Jacobson's Poolside Lesson

This week, a top reporter for WMAQ-TV, Amy Jacobson, was fired after she was videotaped hanging out poolside with Craig Stebic, whose wife has been reported missing.  Jacobson told the Chicago Sun Times that she was on her way to go swimming with her kids on her day off when Stebic's sister, Jill, invited her to the house to discuss the case.  The video raised questions about the ethical conduct of the veteran journalist, who had been assigned to cover the disappearance of Lisa Stebic.

Jacobson admitted she did not handle the situation properly. "I know I made a lapse in judgment," she said.  "I know it and I apologize for it.  But I'm a competitive person and I did it to advance the story."

Also in the Sun Times, Larry Wert, the station's president and general manager, said the matter was "a complicated issue" and "a close, tough call." He praised Jacobson's work as "a valued member of the team for more than 10 years."

But he still fired her.

While it’s true that journalists tend to be held to a higher moralistic standard than the rest of us, there’s a lesson in here that we should all heed. Just because you’re not in the office doesn’t mean you can or should conduct yourself in a manner unbecoming of a respectable employee. When I visit corporations and speak to their twenty-somethings, I always tell them to watch how they act when they go out to the bar or the club together, because there’s nothing to stop some busybody from calling up the company’s HR department and reporting that a group of its employees were spotted dancing on the tables.

An effective corporate persona is the strong, mature, professional face you project to the work world, and to some extent, you should always keep it in the back of your mind when attending to your personal life.  Amy Jacobson thought no one would care what she did on her day off, and if a little business happened to get mixed it, so be it. Don’t make the same mistake.