You've Got to Be Kidding!: How to Keep Your Job Without Losing Your Integrity

“Torn” Loyalties with Bosses

Let me tell you about three assistants who barely survived their no-win loyalty dilemmas, all involving their bosses.

Sondra called me one day with a real doozy of an ethical loyalty dilemma and asked if I had ever heard a similar one, and I certainly had not. This was a first for even me. Sondra worked for an executive search firm whose partners had just split and started their own competitive search firms. Both wanted Sondra to work for them half-time, essentially “sharing” her via joint custody. This meant that she would work 2½ days a week as an office manager for one gentleman, and the other 2½ days as the office manager for the other one. Search firms are highly competitive and the reverence for confidentiality is always crucial because clients and candidates often interchange. Consequently, both her bosses told her that she would be fired on the spot if it ever were determined that she shared anything about the other’s business.

I told Sondra that the good news was that both her bosses paid her a huge compliment by believing she could handle this professional scenario. But she wasn’t so sure and claimed she was a “basket case, worrying constantly about never getting any of their clients/candidates mixed up.” Although this surely was not her bosses’ intent, it looked to me at first blush like a complete recipe for disaster. If Sondra (accidentally or otherwise) leaked any confidential information, she was in a vulnerable position to be blamed. ...