Swiping Credit
MAN IS a perpetually befuddled creature when it comes to ethics. To paraphrase Nietzsche, is man a creation of ethics or is ethics a creation of man? Who knows? And some might add, who cares? Who cares indeed! It is this latter section that is responsible for all the world's ills. Tucked under their non-conformist jackets are the roots of all of society's evils. Who cares indeed! I do. I treasure ethics. I put it on a pedestal along with honesty, righteousness and decency. Then, every morning I take it off the pedestal, polish it, shine it, and put it back there again before heading off for work.
Just the other day I was walking to the office and I found a tenner lying on the road. But did I take it? No sir! Not for the first two seconds anyway. My inner conscience battled with my brain while my eyes did a quick check to see if anybody was looking. This however does not demonstrate that I am an unethical person. On the contrary it shows that I am extremely concerned with ethics. The very fact that my conscience revolted and tossed a cookie at the thought of appropriating forbidden loot shows that matters of morality dwell on the topmost layers of my mind.
The point that I am so painfully trying to illustrate is, ethics as a subject is a minefield. Every step that you take is suspect. Ethics has often been perverted to support many wrongs and to subvert many rights. But when it comes to workplace ethics some things are gratefully clear. For instance, it is a crime to embezzle funds from your company's coffers. It's a simple rule. Thou shalt not steal. It is one of those things that are cut and dried and black and white.
But then there are some things that are not so fortuitously clear. Picture this: you and a colleague have just been assigned to work on a high-end project. You, as is your usual wont, have been spending the major portion of your time drinking coffee and reading self-help books. Your colleague, on the other hand, has been growing pouches under his eyes in trying to put the whole thing together. When the d-day approaches, your colleague informs you that he is going to come in a little late and asks you if you would please make the presentation by yourself. You half-heartedly agree, thinking what a major pain the whole thing is going to be and what an unreliable toad your colleague is for handing you with something like this.
But, nevertheless you steel your nerves and walk in to your boss's cabin, the presentation in hand, butterflies in stomach and a dull grating noise inside of your head. As he rushes through the presentation, you are relieved to see a flicker of a warm glow in his countenance. Soon enough, his face screws up into amiable little lines and he congratulates you on a job well done.
Two weeks later the clients are equally impressed and the boss offers you a promotion. He is under the impression that you are the brains in the team and your colleague is the sidekick; the Robin to your Batman if you will.
What do you do? In hindsight, what you actually do is another matter altogether. The question is what should you do? Should you speak up and make a clean breast of the whole thing, or should you forever hold your peace?
A lot depends upon how that bespectacled colleague of yours reacts. If he turns into a raging homicidal maniac and threatens revenge, or worse, tells your boss that your only contribution to the presentation is the little piece of breadcrumb stuck to the bottom of the file, you have had it. If your colleague is a mild-mannered subservient slug who likes to stay out of the limelight, you have yet another problem. Should you tell or should you not tell? Here again, is a question of ethics.
If you have no conscience, thank yourself. You don't have a dilemma either. Your brain and your soul are not at war.
You could always console yourself with the thought that your colleague didn't want this promotion anyway.
However, the fact of the matter still remains that you did steal from your neighbour. Okay, so you didn't covet his wife, his car or his computer, but you did take what you didn't deserve. Without getting more Biblical about the whole thing, you did something that wise men with flowing white beards would say is wrong.
Like I said before, this whole ethics thing is a minefield. Even if you did own up and passed the scepter on to your colleague's worthy shoulders, you would be faced with much embarrassment. What is worse, so would the boss who offered you the promotion, for giving credit to the wrong guy. How do you get out of this mess?
The first step is to decide what you want to do. To tell or not to tell that is the question. If you decide not to, we extend our hearty congratulations. You have just got yourself a promotion. However, if you do decide to tell, we extend our experienced advice: a) Do it in private. Bosses don't like to be caught on the wrong foot in a room full of spectators; b) Make a show of being virtuous.
This is important. Walk in with the air of a martyr and say something on the lines of... `I'm sorry but I cannot accept this because my dear friend and colleague Mr X has also worked on the project, and I feel, deserves this promotion more than I do'; c) Break the news gently, as you would if you had accidentally backed into his car in the parking lot; d) Be clear in your speech and maintain eye contact; and e) Cross your fingers. It helps sometimes.
ARJUN SENGUPTA
arjuns.hyd@cnkonline.com
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