Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but it sure seems to me that the questions being asked of the New York Times “The Ethicist” column (or the ones he’s choosing to answer) are increasingly obtuse. This suggests a dangerous trend. Are most Americans really that ethically incompetent? Or are the increasingly frequent (it seems to me) instances of blatantly unethical conduct modeled by our elected leaders and shrugged off by our news media causing galloping ethics rot?
The latest query for “The Ethicist” was, in my estimation, steeped in grade school-level ethics ignorance. A female designer who used to work for a sexually harassing boss when she was just getting started eventually told the bastard off and was fired in retaliation. Now she asks,
I’ve since landed a better position at a bigger studio (a job that I got in part, I suspect, because of a reference from [the harrassing ex-boss]). Still, there’s some work from my time at the former studio that I would like to share in my professional portfolio. It’s usually considered good practice to credit the full creative team (or at least the studio) that contributed to the work. After all, I wouldn’t have had access to these clients or their projects without the studio and its connections….however, I shudder at the thought of crediting my harasser next to work that is mostly my creative output, especially if that credit would help legitimize and promote the studio that he still runs.
Do I owe him credit when sharing past work?
Ugh. This is “two wrongs don’t make a right” territory. If the accepted practice in her field is to credit past employers and collaborators, then doing so with her ex-boss or the studio he ran is still the fair and responsible conduct. The inquirer’s treatment at his hands is not relevant: that conduct has established avenues for redress.
Heck, she can wait until he’s running for office or nominated for the Supreme Court is a few decades and get her revenge then.
She might as well have asked, “This creep loaned me $10,000. Can I stiff him and not pay him back because he sexually harassed me?” Or “I’m convinced he dented my car in the company garage but never admitted it. Does that mean I can justifiably refuse to give him credit for work he contributed to?” She is considering revenge, using the “tit-for-tat” reasoning of Donald Trump or the Mafia. Her ex-boss was unprofessional in his treatment of her, so she wants to be unprofessional in her treatment of him. Is our culture really encouraging this rationalization now?
Because he is qualified for the high-profile Times gig, Kwame Anthony Appiah makes short work of the question, although in a way that I do not endorse. His argument is that as much as she might be tempted not to follow her profession’s norms regarding conferring credit on colleagues, others in the profession won’t know about her reasons for snubbing her old boss, and this could reflect badly on her (as, I would argue, it should). “You have every right to try to put this episode behind you, “The Ethicist” concludes. “But it would be a further injustice if you damaged your professional standing in consequence.”
Wait, what? Is he saying that her tit-for-tat plan—“You harassed me, so now I won’t give you the credit you are owed”—is wrong because she won’t get away with it?
Ethics Alarms 
I think the answer to the first question is increasingly “yes.” The answer to the second is definitely “yes.”
You have already alluded to what I’m about to type, but as I read your post, I kept asking myself, “Why didn’t the woman go to HR and lodge a complaint?!?” Every company has people that are hired and paid to deal with these issues. I can’t read past the NYT paywall, but I assuming that the woman’s sole response to the harasser was the verbal altercation that got her terminated. In today’s business environment, where we are regularly given instruction in all forms of workplace harassment (particularly sexual harassment), there is no excuse for not taking the routes laid out in every corporate handbook and backed by law – file a complaint with HR and have them assist in dealing with it.
The concluding response from “The Ethicist” is equally bizarre, and I appreciate you highlighting it. That’s a good catch as I would likely have missed it in the nuance of the wording.
This is a very timely post for me personally, as someone I know is dealing with workplace sexual harassment. In this situation, it’s a client (an older male) who is repeatedly coming into the office and making off-hand references to sexual acts and male and female genitalia (and numerous variations of that) within earshot of at least three or four employees, all of them female…and it is persistent. I have implored the employee (a woman) to talk to her boss (also a woman, who is aware of the situation but has yet to act) and implore her to deal with this before it progresses to the point of an employee-initiated lawsuit against the company for failure to act.
We have tools at our disposal to handle these situations. Doing nothing or doing the wrong thing and then considering revenge (as in the case of the subject woman in the OP) are not the right tools for the job.
Joel, My only disagreement with your post is that elected leaders are mere reflections of the electorate. These leaders would never be elected if the electorate believed they would merely fight the good fight. The electorate votes for people who they believe will get it done even if it means taking ethical shortcuts.
At some point the electorate needs to do some serious introspection for their own role for the decline in civility. Until we do we cannot expect those we vote for to change themselves.
Joel
My mistake the reference to elected leaders as in the quote portion in the block.
Chris, I think you make a very good point. Maybe it’s circular…the electorate feeding the elected which feeds the electorate which…
Regardless, since government is supposed to be “of the people”, the changes need to start with us.
very probably self reinforcing
When the ethical choice happens to be self-serving, it’s a win-win. Here, the advice-giver showed the advice-seeker that what she ought to do would also work to her benefit (and that not doing so could reflect poorly on her).
Socrates said that virtue is its own reward. For the not-so-virtuous, extra incentives can give them the push they need to do the right thing.