The Ethical Workplace
A Survival Guide for Modern Professionals
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The rules changed and nobody reissued the handbook BUY FROM INGRAMSPARKAMAZONKOBOREAD A CHAPTERTABLE OF CONTENTS 138 pages · Paperback ISBN 978-1-946458-37-7 · ebook ISBN 978-1-946458-79-7 |
| 138Pages | 21Chapters | 5Case studies | 3.5MFake Wells Fargo accounts |
The rules changed and nobody reissued the handbook
There was a time when the hardest ethical question at work was whether you could heat fish in the office microwave. Now it is whether to use AI to write a performance review, whether to mention that your manager’s camera was on when it should not have been, and whether liking a colleague’s holiday photographs counts as something else.
When this book was first written, remote work was what freelancers did and nobody had considered whether a doorbell camera might broadcast a delivery to the whole sales team.
The core principles did not move. Honesty is still honesty. What multiplied is the number of situations where applying it is genuinely unclear, and the compliance training covers almost none of them, because compliance training exists to protect the company rather than to help you decide anything.
This is a working guide to those situations, including five companies that got it catastrophically wrong and one that got it right.
What is inside
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Foundations
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In practice
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When it is above you
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Case studies
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Who this is for
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Worth your time if
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Not for you if
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Why me
Richard Lowe, the Writing King
Twenty years as a director inside a $16 billion company, which means twenty years of the meetings where somebody has to decide whether the technically permitted thing is the right thing. I have made those calls and got some of them wrong. The five case studies here are researched. The rest is from having been the person in the chair.
Questions people ask
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Cutting Through the BS |
The situations got weirder, the principles did not
You still have to decide, and it is easier before it is urgent.
BUY FROM INGRAMSPARKAMAZONKOBOREAD A CHAPTERTABLE OF CONTENTS
Paperback and ebook.
A chapter
The Ethical Workplace
Working for an unethical boss is like being trapped in a psychological thriller where you’re never quite sure if you’re the protagonist or the supporting character who doesn’t make it to the end.
The fundamental challenge with unethical bosses is the power imbalance. Unlike problematic colleagues who you can avoid or work around, your boss controls your assignments, your performance reviews, your access to opportunities, and often your continued employment. Recognizing unethical leadership can be tricky because toxic bosses are often skilled at making their behavior seem normal, necessary, or even beneficial.
The credit thief boss presents your work as their own in meetings with senior leadership, takes ownership of successful projects while conveniently forgetting to mention the team that did the actual work, and becomes strangely inarticulate when asked to explain the details of work they supposedly did themselves.
The micromanager boss demands constant updates while providing no clear direction, requires approval for decisions you’re fully qualified to make, and creates a culture of learned helplessness where team members stop thinking independently because independent thinking gets punished.
The favoritism boss rewards loyalty over competence, gives the best assignments to their personal favorites regardless of qualifications, and creates a two-tiered team where some people can do no wrong and others can do no right.
The scapegoat boss takes credit for successes but disappears when things go wrong, blames the team for problems they created through their own poor decisions, and has a remarkable ability to rewrite history about who made which decisions.
Managing up becomes perverse when your boss is unethical. The information control strategy is common among unethical bosses who limit your access to senior leadership, filter communications so that problems get minimized and their role gets maximized, and position themselves as the sole interpreter of organizational priorities.
Working around unethical leadership requires developing alternative sources of information, building relationships with peers in other departments, and finding mentors outside your direct reporting structure. The loyalty test is something many unethical bosses use to identify potential threats. They might ask you to do something questionable, not because they need it done, but to see if you’ll comply. Compliance becomes evidence of loyalty; refusal becomes evidence of unreliability.
Table of contents
The Ethical Workplace
- Introduction: The Evolving Workplace
- Chapter 1: What is Ethics?
- Chapter 2: Why Ethics Matter in the Workplace
- Chapter 3: Building Effective Teams
- Chapter 4: Leadership in the Modern Era
- Chapter 5: Addressing Problematic Behavior
- Chapter 6: Communication Excellence
- Chapter 7: Digital Presence and Social Media
- Chapter 8: Managing Time and Expectations
- Chapter 9: Integrity in Action
- Chapter 10: Work-Life Integration
- Chapter 11: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
- Chapter 12: When DEI Becomes Unethical
- Chapter 13: Emerging Challenges
- Chapter 14: When the Boss is Not Ethical
- Chapter 15: When the Company is Not Ethical
- Chapter 16: Case Study – Enron: When Everything Goes Wrong
- Chapter 17: Case Study – Theranos: The Charismatic Leader’s Deception
- Chapter 18: Case Study – Wells Fargo: Pressure, Incentives, and Individual Choice
- Chapter 19: Case Study – Cambridge Analytica/Facebook: Data Ethics in Action
- Chapter 20: Case Study – Microsoft: Getting Ethics Right
- Chapter 21: Your Responsibility (Yes, Yours)
- Conclusion