Professional Ethics Case Study Format
Submitted by Nancy McClellan and Jan Wachter
For the AIHA Publication of
“Ethics for the Safety and Health Professional: Approaches and Case Studies”
Case Topic Area (Mark the Best Fit):
- Professional Competency - General (Failure to provide competent IH or safety services; failure to accept assignments only when qualified by education and experience)
2. Professional Integrity - General (Failure to be honest, fair and objective)
- Client/Corporate Confidentiality (Failure to protect sensitive information)
- Data/Information Representation and Communication (Failure to report and/or represent objective findings, such as overstating positive results or understating negative results; failure to inform appropriate parties when professional judgment indicates that there is an unacceptable level of risk)
- Credentials Representation (Misuse of ABIH or BCSP certificant’s seal or credentials for another’s work; misrepresentation of academic or professional qualifications)
- Citation of Sources (Failure to recognize the sources of work and research)
7. Conflict of Interest (Failure to decline work or opportunities that are in conflict with professional judgment)
- Public Health Protection (Failure to follow appropriate procedures that protect the greater public’s health)
- Bias / Respect (Failure to act in a manner free of bias with regard to religion, ethnicity, gender, age, national origin, or disability; failure to treat people with respect and civility)
- Other (Please specify)______
Country the Case Occurred In: _____United States______
Case Summary (Please Limit to 1000 words or less):
Dilemma Summary (Describe your view of the ethical considerations of the case):
Potential Resolutions (There may be multiple methods):
TITLE: FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS
"I get by with a little help from my friends."
- John Lennon
CASE SUMMARY
Joe is a junior safety professional at a manufacturing facility. One of Joe’s major job responsibilities is assisting project managers and engineers in conducting risk activities that support management’s approval for all new or modified activities. These risk analyses are important in determining the control and operational requirements that will be imposed on these new or modified activities.
One of Joe’s closest childhood friends, Kevin, has done quite well for himself at the same manufacturing facility and is now a lead project engineer responsible for re-tooling existing manufacturing processes and some new manufacturing processes coming on-line. Kevin has been promoted frequently because he is known as someone who gets the job done, at or under budget, and according to schedule.
Kevin always requests Joe to be his safety professional assisting him on his projects. At first, Joe believed that Kevin’s requests were based on the fact that Kevin felt easy working with him since they’re long-time friends and that Kevin respected Joe’s knowledge, skills and abilities as a safety professional. However, Joe is coming to realize that Kevin may be benefitting from (or putting it more bluntly “using”) his friendship with him in order for Joe to be more lenient and/or quicker when reviewing Kevin’s new or modified projects during these mandatory risk analyses. For instance, Kevin would tell Joe things like: “Joe, I need these risk analyses done right now. I know you’re busy, dude, but please try your best. What are best friends for?” Or “Hey bro, let’s be reasonable here with all of these additional controls. Buddy, they’re really excessive and will add weeks to the schedule. They’ll exceed my budgeted costs too. My boss isn’t going to be happy with a blown schedule and budget. I was really hoping for that bonus this year to take Jill and the kids to Aruba. You know you and your family are welcome to stay at the condo too when we go.”
Joe values Kevin’s friendship, especially since Kevin is one of the very few people Joe keeps in contact with since childhood. Also Kevin is a rising star in the organization – and Joe, who has not been that successful with his own career management in the safety field, could benefit from his continued friendship and good working relationship with Kevin.
DILEMMA
Joe feels troubled and thinks he needs to do something about this current working situation. Should Joe confront Kevin about what Joe perceives as Kevin using his friendship to get “quick and easy” safety reviews? But Joe feels uncomfortable doing this since Joe feels friendship is invaluable and he would feel embarrassed even to bring this up – he can’t believe that Kevin would be using him like this! However, Joe, as a safety professional, also feels compelled to generate quality risk assessments, even though it may mean longer review times and higher construction, control and/or operational costs.
Or should Joe talk to his supervisor about this situation? But that seems like he would be ratting on his best friend and a sign of disloyalty. In any event, management would probably back Kevin because he’s a rising star in the organization and Joe is not.
Or should Joe just go along for the ride and have a “tit-for-tat” attitude toward the whole situation. If indeed Kevin is using his friendship with Joe to get ahead and obtain bonuses, maybe Joe can benefit as well in the long run by riding Kevin’s coattails. What are friends for?
DISCUSSION
There are many things going on in this case study from an ethical perspective. For instance, it probably is a major conflict of interest in this situation for best friends to be working together on these safety reviews, especially if one of the friends thinks he is being exploited or taken advantaged of and that his professional judgment is being clouded and/or he is being forced to make non-optimal decisions due to that friendship.
This is also a case of loyalty versus loyalty – loyalty to one’s friendship versus loyalty to one’s profession – somewhat like a right versus right dilemma. Which duty (friendship versus profession) should have priority? Joe may need to take a consequentialism-based approach to resolving this dilemma. In this manner, Joe would analyze the potential impact of any “compromised” risk assessments on workers’ safety and health at the manufacturing facility. The workers are the potentially affected parties that have not been mentioned so far in this case study – and the impacts of Joe’s actions on them need to be addressed. For instance, Joe needs to determine if the quality of the risk assessments is really being impacted by providing these quick/expedited reviews and if worker safety and health is somehow being diminished by imposing less stringent controls. But Joe also needs to determine the impact on his friendship if he does not comply with Kevin’s requests. So this impact analysis pits loyalty interests related to serving others (workers) to loyalty interests which are self-directed (Joe) – and in the field of ethics self-directed interests typically have the lower priority. But another thing comes into play here. If Joe is providing additional benefits to his friend by expeditiously conducting reviews and being more lenient on the recommended control, this act is more or less discriminatory against all of the other projects engineers who may not be Joe’s closest friend.
In addition, if Joe is a certified safety professional, from a deontological perspective, his actions are probably in violation of his professional code of ethics in terms of not holding paramount the safety and health of workers and not acting with responsibility, integrity and objectivity. From a virtue ethics perspective, his actions do not promote the overall moral principles of caring (of workers) and selflessness.
Also Joe, given his initial gut inclination that something is “wrong” with this whole situation, would probably not pass the intuition-based right versus wrong tests – such as morning after test, front page test, mirror tests, and stench tests.
But is this really a dilemma at all, since can one honestly say that Kevin is really Joe’s friend? A true friend wouldn’t take advantage of another friend in terms of getting what he wants, especially since Kevin seems to have a history of getting what he wants. Kevin’s subtle manipulation of Joe is a sign of disrespect to Joe. Kevin apparently does not acknowledge Joe’s authority in the professional field of safety – and this disrespect is not a sign of friendship. Equally, Joe should not use the situation (his friendship) to get ahead in the organization via a “tit-for-tat” attitude. It could possibly be a different story if Joe were developing the most excellent risk reviews in service of that friendship – and that could be indicative of the quality work that Joe could do. But if Joe simply goes along with the situation and acquiesces to being used (in terms of generating substandard risk assessments) in order to reinforce favor with Kevin so as to ride his coattails to get ahead in the organization, this is clearly unethical.
In addition, Joe may be setting bad precedent for the rest of the organization in terms of the degree of rigor of risk analyses being conducting for the organization on behalf of his friend Kevin. Other engineers may cite Kevin’s projects in terms of the degree of risk control and the timeliness of the risk analyses and demand similar treatment from their assigned safety professionals. Thus, Joe needs to consider the results of his actions not only on the activities that he is directly supporting, but also on those activities that could be secondarily impacted as the results of his actions.
So what should Joe do?
Friendships are important to maintain and nurture (in most cases). If Joe really values his friendship with Kevin he should go out of his way to generate the most excellent risk assessments he can because he respects his friend – and perhaps even work on his own time to pursue excellence. Joe’s risk assessments for Kevin in terms of quality should be able to sustain the scrutiny of being reviewed by other safety professionals in his organization and beyond. Joe should talk to Kevin informing him that Joe’s clients for these risk analyses also include the workers that work on Kevin’s processes – and Joe has a responsibility to serve these workers as well as Kevin.
Perhaps Joe should talk to his supervisor as to revising the way the organization appoints points of safety contact for conducting risk assessments for the organization’s project engineers – and explain that it would be best interest for safety professionals to be assigned to a breadth of project engineers and their projects in order to gain greater opportunities for broader learning experiences. The responsibility of these assignments could be with the Safety and Health Director as opposed to the project engineers.