January 13th, 2012
The Ethics Of The “Everyone Does It” Defense
Best Buy Ethics, by Kathleen Edmond.Over the course of my career, I have seen hundreds of situations in which employees are disciplined for bending the rules or violating company policy in some way. It’s not at all unusual for employees to make the following statements in their defense:
- “Everyone does it that way…”
- “I was just following the rest of the group…”
- “Billy and Sally got caught doing the same thing and nothing happened to them…”
From the standpoint of fairness, it’s always critical to determine whether the action being disciplined was an isolated, willful act by an employee who clearly knew better or if it was a pattern of behavior that was truly condoned or encouraged by those with leadership authority. The former constitutes clear grounds for disciplinary action; the latter is much trickier. (For you film buffs, the “Code Red” subplot in A Few Good Men offers a classic example.) My questions for you:
1) If something is wrong and you know it to be wrong, is “everyone does it that way” ever a relevant defense for your actions? Why or why not?
2) What if the inappropriate activity in question was openly condoned or encouraged by company leadership? Who should suffer the consequences of discipline?
a. Only the subordinate who violated the rule/policy
b. Only the leader who condoned/encouraged the activity
c. Both equally
d. Both, but the leader is more accountable than the subordinate
3) What about situations where, in fact, Billy and Sally did get caught doing exactly the same thing and were not disciplined? How would you treat the employee now facing disciplinary action? Why?
This is a good question and one that we sometimes face.
1) If you know something is wrong and you do it anyway, then you have to face the consequences. However, if everyone does it and you are the only one that is reprimanded for it, then that is defense against the severity of the consequences, not the action itself.
2) If you are encouraged to do something by your leadership, then the leader is more at fault. Of course, it depends on the specific circumstance, but when a leader asks you to do something, it is wrong to not follow his direction. In extreme situations, when it is obvious that it isn’t an ethical thing to do, both the associate and the leader could be at fault.
3) I wouldn’t do anything with the associate. I would follow up with the management in the building. If they wish to stop the behavior, they will need to inform all the associates in the building that it is an incorrect behavior and while it was accepting in the past, there will be repercussions for violating the rule in the future. After everyone in the store signs off on that and the rule is followed consistently, anyone who breaks it will receive the same punishment for breaking that rule.
This came up once in one of my stores. An associate had accepted a tip for doing a good service for a customer. There was an issue with the service provided and the customer contacted the store to get her tip money back. We took care of the customer and called HR for support. After investigation, all the associates that were randomly spoken with believed that taking tips was okay. None of the associates admited to taking a tip, but all said that they knew about others that had. We talked about the rule at the next all store meeting and had all associates sign off that they understood the rule. We haven’t had another incident since then.
Really interesting thinking as always.
My answers are:
1/ I am not gonna be honest if I say “no, I will never do something bad even if everybody does it”. I think it will truly depends on the kind of actions I face. For instance, if it’s gonna hurt someone, I really think I will not do it. This is my personal limit. But I still beleive hat the argument is not a relevant defense.
2/ Both, but the leader is more accountable than the subordinate because he encouraged the bad behaviour. But the subordinate did have the choice of saying “no”.
3/ I would treat the employee with more indulgence but still make it exemplary for the next case. If not, everybody will later say “but XXX was not disciplined either”. Maybe I’ll try to include Billy & Sally in the punishment? Or is it bad for encouraging denouncement???