In his Crisis Guru Commentaries, Jim Lukaszewski provides real answers to real questions about your most critical communications problems and issues.

To submit a question, please direct it by e-mail to crisisguru@e911.com.  Be sure to include your full name, affiliation, address, and telephone number.  All published questions will be identified by title and industry only.  Your confidentiality will be protected.

Question:
 
Dear Crisis Guru:

Why won’t my colleagues take me seriously when I act as the conscience of the company?  While the CEO didn’t actually appoint me to this position, I know he appreciates what I’m trying to accomplish when I call people on their unethical or, frankly, rather stupid ideas.

Senior Communicator
Fortune Most Admired Company

Answer:

Dear Most Admired:

There are companies where someone, once in awhile a public relations person, is designated at the company’s corporate conscience.  Frankly, it’s hard to imagine a PR person getting this position since ours is a profession that is rarely respected with such a task.

Let me make three important suggestions for your consideration:

Besides the more obvious mistakes that lead to unethical behaviors, there are other, less apparent, more insidious kinds of unethical behaviors that can lead to problems.  Sometimes these less obvious behaviors are the precursors to illegal behavior.  When you can identify these behaviors in your vicinity, there is trouble ahead.  Act promptly to correctly these situations.

• Lax control:  A manager’s careless enforcement, education about, and monitoring of ethical standards.
• Lack of tough, appropriate centralized compliance within each area of the company.
• No one charged with responsibility of teaching, enforcing, and disciplining in cases where ethical breaches occur.
• Leadership that allows supervisors to overlook bad behavior.
• Leadership that allows employees to experiment with methods and tactics outside established guidelines.
• Emphasis on “doing whatever it takes” to achieve appropriate business and financial goals.
• Managers and supervisors who minimize the importance of oversight and compliance processes.
• Structuring incentives in such a way that they can compromise the ethical behavior of people, the quality of the products and services we deliver, and allow shortcuts to be taken for a variety of obviously questionable reasons.
• Avoiding confrontation with managers who chronically misbehave or chronically overlook misbehavior.
• The tendency to operate “on the edge,” always pushing for more than is appropriate.
• Management that ignores the signs of and doesn’t question rogue behavior.
• Management tolerating the inappropriate behavior or management by individuals who are “critical to the organization’s mission.”  These are the folks who are the super sales people, the high achievers who are allowed to break the rules to maintain the altitude of their performance.
• Belittling or humiliating those who suggest or seek ethical standards.
• Dismissing or destroying the careers of employees who report bad or outright wrong behavior.
• Demeaning the internal or external credibility of those who blow the whistle, those who report or bring management’s attention to lapses in ethics.

My message to you is that if you want to be engaged in ethics and be the conscience of the company, move toward integrity and deal in the issues and situations the really truly matter.

Cordially,

Jim Lukaszewski