A Liar in the Chair
So there I was...
Giving notice. The vast majority of separations throughout my career have been to move on to something better. Rarely was it because I was not the right fit, sometimes it was the financial gymnastics start-ups are so famous for, and on a couple occasions it was because an organization or leader crossed an ethical red line. This was one of those red line moments.
Here's the thing, my CV is clear that my doctoral focus is organizational and leadership ethics. It is clear that I developed and taught graduate level ethics courses for two large universities. There's even a video of me presenting my Framework for Ethical Decision Making at UT Good Systems week at The World Economic Forum. In other words, my position on ethical standards is a known known to anyone that hires me, and I like to believe it is also a strong reason why they do.
So what I don't get is lying. And I'm not talking about pushing the limits of an interpretation or an incomplete set of facts driving a narrative, I'm talking about a clear misrepresentation designed to get me to do something I would not otherwise do and remove my agency. An overt act to manipulate. And so in this case, after I previously forgave my boss after receiving a heartfelt (or so I thought) apology for lying to me about something significant, I was treated to an encore performance just months later.
So, without something else lined up, I used my feet to forcefully state my objection. This was not the first time and it was not the last I walked for being lied to, and there are plenty of people that question my approach. Heck, even I do at times. But my sense of right and wrong is entirely my own (as yours should be) and I'm the one sleeping or not sleeping at night. I am a firm believer that you are judged by the company you keep, which includes the company and the people you work for. I don't work for a company when the chair is occupied by a liar.
HR Dive published an article yesterday indicating that nearly half of employees surveyed considered quitting over organizational ethics issues. Two things really bug me about that. Only half considered it and not 75% or more actually did it.
The article actually cited 47% considered, and it is plain weak sauce. Almost half of the American workforce looked at a gap between what their employer preached and what it practiced, felt the exact thing I felt walking out that door, and then sat back down. Weak. Sauce. I get that not everyone has the ability to quit without something lined up, and on other occasions I have. But this?
The company that ran the survey, Resume Now, asked a thousand workers how they would act in an ethical dilemma. Thirty-six percent stayed silent about something unethical specifically to protect their job. More than half felt pressure to fit the mold. And twenty-one percent, one in five, admitted they have lied to protect their own image or position. Ugh.
Here is my position about a boss or company purposely lying to you, and why it is the one red line I do not negotiate. Every other ethical failure you can at least argue: a bad call, a conflict of interest, a shortcut... You can see it, weigh it, debate it. A lie ain't that. A deliberate misrepresentation, the overt act to manipulate, is designed to take your judgment away from you by poisoning the facts you would use to judge. You cannot run any decision, ethical or otherwise, on inputs someone has corrupted on purpose. That is why I forgave the first one and walked on the second. The first was a person failing and hopefully learning. The second told me the failing was the strategy, and it turned out the organization was okay with that. I made the right decisions as so many calls from past colleagues would prove in the years that followed. They stayed and suffered, I walked and grew.
I have spent years on the idea of the empty chair, the seat in the room that should hold the person who will live with the decision and too often does not. This survey is about its evil twin. The chair is not empty. It is occupied by a liar. And an occupied chair with a liar in it is more dangerous than an empty one, because everyone downstream now has to make their own decisions on information they cannot trust, and slowly they learn the lesson the twenty-one percent already learned: around here, you survive by doing it too. A liar at the head of the table does not stay just one liar, it builds a cohort of liars.
Now drop this into the present moment. The same survey notes, almost in passing, that only about a third of managers have had any real training on using AI ethically for the decisions that change lives, the promotions and the layoffs. Think about what that does to everything I just described. The manipulation I walked away from required a human being to look me in the face and say a false thing. It had a chair, and a face in it. The new version does not need either. You can launder the same lie through a model, call it data, and now the 47% who would have quit over a person will not even see it, because there is no face on the other side of the red line anymore. The liar in the chair just got the option to leave the chair empty and let the machine take the meeting.
So if you run a company, do not read that 47% as a retention problem to be surveyed and soothed with HR-generated affirmations. It is a mirror. Half your people have one foot out the door over the gap between what you say and what you do, and most of them will never tell you, because you have taught them what happens to the ones who speak up. The number that should scare you is not the ones considering the exit. It is the thirty-six percent who went quiet and the one in five who started lying back. That is not a culture with an ethics problem. That is a culture becoming the thing at the head of its own table.
I know my way is not everyone's, and I will not pretend it is without collateral and pain. I have walked without a net, more than once, and people who love me have correctly raised an eyebrow. I am not telling you to quit your job tomorrow. I am telling you that
"I considered quitting" is not a resting place, but a fork in the road.
So here is my question this morning, from a guy who has said later gator rather than become the thing I abhor.
You already know if the chair you work under has a liar in it. The only question left is the one the survey did not ask. What did you do with the knowing, and who are you becoming until you decide?
Source: Nearly half of workers have considered quitting over their employer's ethics, HR Dive
#AI #Ethics #Leadership #Integrity #Trust #TheEmptyChair #STIW