Does it matter to you, once you’ve been paid, what kind of things your clients do – what you helped them accomplish?
Money is money. We need it. It pays our bills, feeds our families and keeps us coming back for more.
And if you’re not in business to make money, why are you in business? Make way for the real capitalists. Go off and volunteer your time. Join the Peace Corps, if that’s your thing. Get out of the way.
Or do you think your principles should get in the way?
Scenario: tomorrow morning your phone rings. Its a C-level executive at a lobbying firm. They read some of your stuff, browsed your website and they like what they’ve seen. They’d like to hire you to handle their online marketing.
The offer: a $350k/year retainer for a part-time engagement.
They give you a few days to think it over and ask you to check out their website in the mean time.
Before you pull up their site do you check your principles?
Do you know where you draw the line – what you’d have to see that would cause you to turn the deal down flat?
Or is it just business to you? They could well be lobbying for Soylent Green, the pay is right and you’ve got a family to feed, so you’re taking the deal.
Are you prepared to turn down money?
A friend of mine runs an excavation company. Once in a while he shows up at a job site where the proper environmental protections, like silt fences to prevent runoff from contaminating and disturbing local waterways.
When he sees this, he always does the same thing: he drives away. He turns down the job.
He’s not going to compromise his principles, or the law, to earn a dollar.
I left one well-paying job and turned down another because the principles of these companies didn’t jibe with my own. I didn’t like what I saw. And, believe me, I needed the money.
Mission statements are BS
Think of the worst corporation in your mind. The most slash-and-burn, profits-above-people, evil business you can think of. Or maybe just one that has done some rotten stuff in the past.
Now go visit their website. Find their mission statement. Or maybe they’re calling it, “corporate responsibility.”
Here’s a good example of what I’m talking about – a page from our favorite homogeneous clothing retailer heralding their principles of “diversity & inclusion.”
It’s laughable when you consider this corporation’s legal troubles. Laughable because we know that values aren’t expressed in writing – they’re expressed in action.
Where’s your line?
I’m not just asking hypothetically – I want to know what you think.
Have you ever found yourself regretting working for a company or individual who played a dirty game? Did you feel it made you complicit, in some way, to what you felt was wrong?
Or are you of the mindset that your clients’ ethics are not your concern – that as long as you keep your side of the street clean you have no regrets?
Will you turn away money from people who don’t hold the same principles you do?
This is a great question. One that I think goes along well with one of your recent posts (http://unstuckdigital.com/money/). It’s a tough thing to say no to something, especially if that something leads to money, and even more so in the current economic climate.
After years of seeing “how things are done in business” (or at least that was the line told to me by the owners to make themselves feel ok with their actions), I made a mental note to be truthful and honest about what I will and won’t do for a client.
Sure, it’s easy to say yes, go along with things for a while and see how it all pans out. But in the end you feel almost dirty, and the money doesn’t make things better.
I’d much rather say no, and look for other work to do then say yes and regret it for the length of the project. I’ve done that with past companies I’ve worked at and it never ends well, at least not in my opinion.
You have to stay true to yourself and your values.
It isn’t always an easy question to answer – I think in some respects we don’t know where the line is until we cross it.
This post stemmed from a conversation I had with someone recently who demanded that it “didn’t matter” what his clients did and that he “didn’t need to concern himself” with that sort of thing. He was just “doing his job.”
I was once talking with an affiliate marketer at a conference in NYC, and he was explaining how he was earning $3k/week pushing membership programs with absurd ballooning payments hidden in the small print. The conversation drifted off when he got the idea I wasn’t impressed.
“How things are done in business” is a pretty blatant cop-out – making themselves feel OK, you’re absolutely right.
Money is amoral – what you do to get it is not.
Dang it man! Would you stop dropping these time black holes by giving me these arcane movies that I watch and then have to go digging into deeper? (Ever since he was Moses I’ve loved watching Charlton Heston. Another great classic is Omega Man)
So, back to the post. I’d say it’s a heart thing.
Take for example when I worked as a waiter for a swanky restaurant, and I saw the owner padding the reception bill for drinks. I marked down drinks honestly when I turned in my chits so my conscience was clean. But it still bothered me. After awhile I came to the following rationalization.
The client that was being cheated selected the restaurant and the way the affair was to be billed after talking to the owner. So even though he may have been cheated, at least the choice was his. So though it bothered me, it didn’t bother me enough to quit.
Yet, if I knew that the owner was out in the parking lot stealing hubcaps every night, I would have walked immediately.
I don’t know if that makes sense, but what I was trying to say was that there are various shades of grey and some of us see the colors differently.
Hehe, come on that scene is classic!
I agree it isn’t always black & white, and there are just some things you can’t know or be responsible for. But once you become aware of an ethical transgression, then you’ve got a choice to make.