The Top 50 Management Dilemmas

Unethical behaviour

Someone who reports to you is behaving in a way that you consider to be professionally unethical. You are concerned about both what the individual is doing and the risk to the team’s reputation.

First, think:

There are lots of different definitions of ethics and ethical behaviour. For the purposes of this book we have defined ethics as ‘the rules that govern our behaviour’. We might equally use terms such as ‘values’ or ‘principles’ to capture this same idea. The important thing is to focus on the behaviour in the situation at hand:

• Is it a clear and obvious violation of the rules? Is it an obvious violation of your own or the organisation’s values? Is it an example of conflicting country cultural norms? Is what you see ...