A rich seam of research suggests that employees are more likely than ever to care about their organisation’s reputation, ethics and social impact.
Yet we’re also living in a time where the basic psychological contract between employers and employees has been seriously damaged.
Loyalty does not prevent layoffs. Teams are running leaner than ever. We have a constant stream of evidence that companies that once set the standard for professional conduct are acting in ways that are at best, contrary to their stated values and at worst, challenging established norms of international law.
On a day to day level, all this means that both unrealistic expectations and scenarios which challenge our personal ethical frameworks are becoming a more everyday occurrence. In this article, we’ll explore what to do when you receive a request that makes you uncomfortable and give guidance on challenging expectations with clarity and confidence.
The first step if you’re faced with unrealistic or unethical expectations is to think through what’s actually causing the discomfort you’re experiencing. Whilst this sounds incredibly obvious, it’s harder said than done.
Although it’s incredibly hard, the best possible thing you can do at this point is to buy yourself some time to parse through the information you’ve received. In taking this pause, you’re also setting yourself up to resist a choice that’s likely being falsely framed as necessary or urgent.
Once you’ve taken a beat to process, your next step when faced with a practical or moral dilemma at work is to ask more questions.
This will help you to gain perspective on how the request has come about and what’s driving it and allow you to build context to help identify a way forward.
One of the things that’s useful to explore is how attached the person who made the request is to the solution they’re proposing and what, exactly, they're trying to achieve. The old adage ‘knowledge is power’ is highly relevant here. If you understand the goal behind the request, you’re in a much better position to advocate for an alternative.
Asking questions will also help you identify what, exactly, it is that’s causing alarm. Unethical requests exist on a spectrum. There’s a big difference between a request that’s illegal and one that feels like more of a slight to your personal values or simply untenable.
If, on further interrogation you believe that the request being made might be illegal in some way shape or form, then you should tread very carefully.
If you feel safe to do so, speak to your HR or People team for some confidential advice. Bigger companies will often have internal processes for reporting suspected misdeeds, so don’t forget to check these out too as demonstrating your awareness of such policies helps reinforce the need to do things by the book.
If you are in the UK, you might also want to do some research on Whistleblowing and speak to ACAS for some free guidance on how to exercise your rights.
Once you’ve gathered further information and established that the request being made is not illegal, if you still feel uncomfortable, then one tool you can use to advocate for a different solution is appealing to the company's stated values and pitching viable alternatives.
Even if the person proposing an unrealistic or unethical action doesn’t really care about the values themselves, they likely do care about the optics of directly contravening them and damaging team trust as a result. For this reason, appealing to values can be a bit of a trump card.
To create buy-in, suggest alternative ways forward which protect both your colleagues personal reputation and the organisation’s external image.
The worst decisions are made in the shadows. This means that another route to help you push back against illegal or unethical decision making is simply involving more stakeholders.
Bringing in different opinions serves two useful functions. Firstly, it slows down decision making and reduces leaders’ ability to use urgency as a forcing factor.
Secondly, having a broader range of opinions takes the pressure off you to come up with all the answers and opens up room for others to challenge alongside you.
Being asked to do something which is unethical, unrealistic or even illegal creates immense pressure and stress. However, as we’ve seen, there are ways to navigate the situation delicately and without shirking responsibility or compromising your ethics. Just don’t forget to start with those deep breaths. Courage. You’ve got this.
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