Ethical Dilemma

Have been really working the coping skills today. Trying to cope with the over stimulated emotions has me hypo manic and who knows what next.

It all centres around this dilemma I am facing about bullying and how we respond to bullying or even if people recognize it when it is in their face. Or how people deny or ignore it when it serves their best interest. Here is some of what I am asking while I try to sort things out.

When is it okay for a bully to decide who I hang out with? When is it okay for me to turn a blind eye when I know he is bullying someone else? I am in the business of helping people. The person he is bullying could really benefit from my support. To challenge the bully could be very risky. It could compromise my ability to support others. Is one person’s interest enough to jeopardize the opportunity to help many others who need my help too? It is a risk I take.

The bully gives me lots of help to do my job; just so long as I don’t try to help those people he is bullying. Do I turn away from one person in need? Do I turn a blind eye and keep taking his generous gifts to me or do I take a stand and find a way to survive without his support? I feel compelled to take a stand.

Can I live with the trade-off? Can I turn my back on someone in need? Can I compromise my own values and ethics? How do I stay true to who I strive to be as a human being if I can be bribed? How do I maintain my promise to live an ethically principled life and turn someone away who I am morally charged to support? I can’t.

I want to not be willing under any circumstance to compromise my promise and to not be a hypocrite. I want never to be bullied into trading my moral obligation, no matter the cost. I want to be true to a principle-centre life. It really is all or nothing with me. You can’t believe yourself as principled or believe you are walking a good road if you can be bought and detoured.

Why do I feel so alone with such strong and life determining beliefs? It makes me crazy to see how little ethics survive real life situations these days. I am all mixed up.

Here is the real time situation that has me facing this dilemma. Even to call it a dilemma shows a weakness in my ethical armour.

An emerging friendship centre has contracted me for 12 month to deliver an employment program. They asked me to recommend space options for the program. I layed out the limited options and made my recommendation. There were many obvious advantages to the space I recommended as the clear front runner. It meets all of their wish list and much more.

The president of the friendship centre ran into the centre’s City Liaison. They talked about the search for space. He agreed that my recommendation was ideal but he warned the president off suggesting there was too much politics involved in the space. When I spoke to the president she seems willing to heed his concern and nix the space as an option. For her it is not worth the risk to go against the City because the Friendship Centre benefits from the City’s support. For her it is a fair trade off to stay out of the mix.

The politics involved revolves around the City’s interests in land where this space is situated. The land is currently owned by a small non-profit that has been battling the City for decades to preserve the towns historic old train station. The City has bullied this group of 70 and 80 year old lifelong citizens in the hope of wearing them down or maybe just waiting for them all to die off. The City’s interest is in tearing down the station house, commercially developing the land and securing a larger tax base.

Now we have a city official, who because of the City’s entanglement with the station house is in a conflict of interest position influencing the decision of others in the City’s favour. He is ethically bound to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest and yet he did it knowingly, openly and with casual disregard. This is not acceptable to me.

This is not the first job I will have backed away from because of ethical and moral conflicts. If I walk away my friends and family will shake their heads and tell me I am being irresponsible and taking this ‘ethics and principle’ stuff too far. Few of the people around me will be able to understand or support me if I choose to walk away. I wish it were that simple for me but I am glad it isn’t at the same time.

For now I wait to see how it unfolds. Will the rest of the Board allow themselves to be intimidated by the threat of ruffling relations with the City? Will they base their decision on the council members warning or will it be based on selecting the best space and be willing to work around the politics.

My next step depends on their next step. I need this job. It is worth 5 times what I receive from disability benefits. The money from this job would be a lifesaver. The clock has been ticking for me as I wonder how much longer before they come and take my house from me. The pantry is empty and some days I go without to make sure my son is fed. My family says I can’t live on my principle but I say I can’t live without them.

Will I bow to the pressure and abandon my beliefs? Can I be bought? I am wrestling for the right answer to this potential dilemma. The fact that I am wrestling disturbs me. It should be easy. Without ethics nothing else matters.

Not sure anyone has stuck it out to read this long ramble of mine. It helps me to clarify some of my thinking either way. I can let it go for the moment while I wait to see how this in fact unfolds. But it isn't easy. It has been a rough day with this popping into my head all the time.

I now give this up to the universe to determine my fate. I have been as authentic with myself as I can be. That is all I can do for now. I claim some peace for myself.

I'm confused. Is whether or not the train station is preserved, connected in some way to your getting this job? I don't see how the responsibility for that decision could rest on you, from what you've described here. I think it is inevitable that there would be some politics in the kind of community-building work you do.

you can only do your best, if others make it difficult to go with the best option, then you have to make do with what is left of the rest. life's not always ideal - actually it rarely is... You don't have to win every fight.

Thanks for your replies. My dilemma is not connected to me getting the job; the job is mine if I want it.

The responsibility for the decision does not rest with me but with the Board of Directors. They will decide. If they make a decision based on what is best for the community then we are good to go. If they bow to the City's bullying tactics and turn their backs on the station house to keep the City happy then we are not good to go.

I am just so hugely disappointed. I really thought I was getting ready to work with some warriors for justice. Instead I find myself on the verge of linking up with people who may have no moral back bone and no fight in them after all.

I know life is rarely ideal and I hear you and others Blackpup about making do and doing your best with what life throws at you. Somehow that isn't enough for me. It would require me to be complacent about injustice. If it requires me to shrug off, accept or tolerate in silence the wrong actions of others then I am not going to do well in that kind of toxic environment.

Returning to the work force after almost a decade is tough enough. Facing this dilemma right out of the gate does not make it any easier.

You are right hankster there is a lot of politics at play in the work I do. There is a lot of politics in our everyday lives; more and more every day. That doesn't make it okay. It doesn't give me a free pass to wave off injustice or turn a blind eye to bullying and intimidation no matter how distant from me.

Anyways.... I am just still venting I guess. I know what I will do if I have to. It is a no brainer for me. There should be no dilemma but times are hard right now so it is tempting to cross the line. Somehow I will find another way to keep afloat if it comes to that. Like a friend once said to me….’I was looking for a job before I got this one. I will do it again if I have to.’ Time will tell how this unfolds.

Could it be that the train station is of more importance to you than it is to everyone else?

I live in a city with many old, historical buildings and sites and I am also disappointed when one of them disappears for something new. The scenario where they are waiting for the elderly owners to pass on is not a new concept. The heirs often are happy to have a tangible item they can sell for a profit.

As long as you are not in a position where you are personally responsible for representing the owners and their best interests, I think you are safe from feeling guilty about the events of the future.

I do appreciate the views being shared but I can't seem to excuse myself from being responsible for my own actions if I don't challenge the actions of others that concern me. Sure its ultimately someone elses decision as to where the program will be housed. What they decide is not nearly as important as how and why the reach the decision they do. There is the test of ethical conduct. There is the moment of truth. There is when we know who holds the power.

The people who are the members of the Historical Society who owns the station house are very important to me.

It is really no more complicated than that. I don't think it is right to ostrisize people and especially not old people. It is just an ugly situation from where I sit.

well this is just my opinion of course but if it were me and it came down to having a roof over my childs head and food on the table and my principals then I would choose the roof and food and my principals be damned.
as I said that is just me, I am not saying anything bad about you please dont think that I am just saying what I would do in a case as this. and i agree it is an ugly situation. I wish you all the luck in the world on your decision

I would too, with a difference. I don't feel that principles are damned by that, because well-being/roof/food are an ethical issue as well. It may not be as public, but it is probably just as important a consideration (Especially as it's a matter of basics, not a matter of extravagance.)

No judgement though - want to be clear on that. You know the situation best. I've gone against city hall myself over wrong-doing by those who felt they were above the law because of the power/money. It concerned building too and the law only being ignored in the average joe neighborhoods. So I get that. Ultimately lost, but went down fighting after months of unrelenting persistance. It came down to being called to a back room meeting with town big cheeses to make me go away. I laid it out plain and simple, citing their own statutes. It came down not to right and wrong, but to them knowing I couldn't afford to sue*. At the end I told them that they knew damn well what they were doing was wrong and called them out on their obvious lack of conscience.
So, yeah. Been there.

Good luck with whatever you decide, snowgoose.

(*I did try to get the neighbors involved, but they were too afraid of retaliation by the town powers to speak up. I didn't surmise that, they said it flat out. Pretty much tells you all you need to know about that town(!))

Thank you all for chiming in on this. You are provoking me in a good way.

I do need to provide for my family. The question for me then is how far would I go to keep a roof over our heads and food in the pantry? Would I kill, rob a bank, sell my body? No I wouldn't do any of those things. I would find another way to take care of my family's needs. Would I turn my back on victims if it makes it 'easier' to keep a roof over our heads? Where is the line? Can there even be a line if one is truly driven by principles and values? That is the simple question I feel I am being asked to answer for myself. If something is on the continuum of the whole is it not still part of the whole? Can we apply a principle to one thing and not apply the same principle to another on the same continuum of compromised principles?

I am not trying to be arguementative with anyone. It probably sounds like I am but what I hope I am doing is to clarify for myself what principles are at play here and how I can honour myself and my beliefs to determine how I will play them out. How I can get my cake and eat it too.

Here is a quote from a random site that speaks about principle-centred living. I read Stephen Covey's books years ago and it added food for thought while I moved towards a more principle-centred lifestyle.

Quote:

When you are principle centered, you endeavor to live your life in adherence to immutable natural laws which cannot be violated with impunity. You only make choices based on your core values and beliefs grounded in correct principles which always leads to true growth and happiness. Instead of placing a high value on things which are temporary; place the highest value on principles because they are eternal.

http://www.deanlforbes.com/dlf/2011/01/principle-centered.html

Thanks again for your input.

Thanks Innerzone for sharing you 'butting-heads' experience with City Hall. It is good to hear when people say enough already and take action.

In terms of finding a parallel to my situation I would like to ask if I may how you might play it out if say..... after you exposed the wrongdoing you were asked by a City supporter to put your head in the sand and let it go anyways? That's what I feel I am being asked to do. Wave off an unnecessary and cruel injustice as the cost of doing business. I guess I don't see things like normal people do. Dah!! lol.

I still don't see the connection? You don't want to take the job because it means you would be implying approval of whose behavior? That's what I don't get. Who is funding your position, the city or fed or state? What is the relation of the job to the train station, besides that they are both city property or projects? I guess I would ultimately advise, don't let other people stop you from living your life. Also, what is the quote, the only thing evil needs to succeed, is for good people to do nothing? But you are supported here, whichever way you go.

Sorry Hankster. It gets confusing because it is all still speculative and the details do kind of get lost in the mix.

At the end of the day you have the jist of it. Living with integrity and being of service without moral compromise. True to myself. True to who I want to be as a model to my children and others. True to doing good. True to all that I hold dear.

Like Blackpup says we just do the best we can. There will always be challenges.

Looked through this a bunch again. If I follow corrrectly, the board and the property owners are separate sets of people. You like both. Neither is an instigator of the wrong-doing. Your working is not harmful to either group.

I don't get the sense that the property will be bought by the Center. Leased, yes? Either way, the city will continue to want the property even if the Center locates there. Even if the dissuasion of the president had not occured, locating there would present an on-going challenge to their operation. This is a legimate concern on their part. I'm guessing the center is a charitable organization(?) (Especially) as such, it would be a good thing to choose the situation that will best allow them to focus on that worthy work. So considering these things (as they should) it may not be simply a matter of spinelessness. It is not just a matter of physical location, it is full consideration of what is best for their enterprise in all aspects the property impacts. As you correctly state, the choice is theirs to make. And may involve more than meets the eye, and therefore it might be over-reaching to declare their moral standing based on this (because to do so denies they have any considerations for their enterprise outside of the one you are focused on - and they simply may not see it exactly the same way, ie. as straight up bullying. If they don't feel they've been bullied after all...and/or had other factors to weigh in that you might not be aware of...). I wouldn't write them off.

Guess it boils down to I don't see what would be gained by walking over it. If they have a good enterprise to house, it is good to help that and not presume too much about their decision making process. (I've been on a planning committee, and I'm sure all are like this in that we do discuss aspects and considerations that those outside the group are not privy to. It does not mean they are bad things. Also, things always seem simpler from the outside. Nothing underhanded about it, it's just the way it is.)

I think you are more valueable in than out. For starters because you care.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone Looked through this a bunch again. If I follow corrrectly, the board and the property owners are separate sets of people. You like both. Neither is an instigator of the wrong-doing. Your working is not harmful to either group.

Yes, separate groups and yes I support both. The question I am mulling is whether or not I can work for a group IF they allow the City to influence their decision making. And if I do accept their conflict of interest influence am I not then party to or at very least condoning unethical behaviour? Sure I could just shrug it off as 'out of my hands' but only 50% of it is out of my hands. I could brush it off because I face my own practical pressures.

I still don't know the ethical answer but, "I do know that the next step to take will be clear in time to take it."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone I don't get the sense that the property will be bought by the Center. Leased, yes? Either way, the city will continue to want the property even if the Center locates there.

Yes, a lease agreement and yes the City will still go after the land.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone Even if the dissuasion of the president had not occured, locating there would present an on-going challenge to their operation. This is a legimate concern on their part.

Agreed there would be an on-going challenge and there are legitimate concerns to consider. I am fine with that. Due diligence is critical to any decision making process. What I am not fine with are decisions by intimidation. It becomes an indicator of things to come from my experiences. Plus this would be happening on my watch.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone I'm guessing the center is a charitable organization(?)

No not yet. They are a non-profit community service society - a friendship centres whose mission is in part 'to service the needs of urban aboriginal people and others living in the community..... to build bridges between cultures, collaborations with and support other community organizations.....

The station house is one of those other community organizations that has actively support the friendship centre. Do they not deserve the same consideration when the opportunities arise? Does this not darken the 'mission' of the friendship centre? I think it does and that concerns me. I would feel the same no matter the 'other' organization.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone (Especially) as such, it would be a good thing to choose the situation that will best allow them to focus on that worthy work. So considering these things (as they should) it may not be simply a matter of spinelessness. It is not just a matter of physical location, it is full consideration of what is best for their enterprise in all aspects the property impacts.

All addressed in my recommendation. All agree the station house is the best fit for the friendship center. As a space and as a location and especially at the costs. We live in a small town, less than 4,000 people. There is politics every which way you turn. It is a matter of how much weight one gives it. Besides it is nothing compared to the politics around the fact that it is a native friendship centre. A street front location (only other options) could be worse politically and practically because 'no one wants to see a bunch of Indians hanging around town'.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone .... as straight up bullying..

They admit it is a bully tactic.... perhaps a lesser of two evils. Still evil.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone I wouldn't write them off.

I don't know how this will unfold. I don't know if I will be writing them off as a client. Either way I won't write them off completely. I will continue to volunteer my time and talents as a member. I will continue to serve the interests of the members in anyway I can.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone Guess it boils down to I don't see what would be gained by walking over it. If they have a good enterprise to house, it is good to help that and not presume too much about their decision making process. (I've been on a planning committee, and I'm sure all are like this in that we do discuss aspects and considerations that those outside the group are not privy to. It does not mean they are bad things. Also, things always seem simpler from the outside. Nothing underhanded about it, it's just the way it is.)

I hear you and so long as things are done fairly and honestly I am good to go. We don't know yet if the councilman's influence will take hold. We do know he exerted it so time will tell. There isn't much that goes on with the Board that I don't know about. I am the adviser they hired to develop and train the Board; to develop the policies and bylaws and to write funding grants. This is a new Board and I will be doing an orientation session with them next week.

At the end of the day I am resting my hope on the Board to make the right decision for the centre with no intimidation. They are good people and I would really miss this opportunity to do some direct program delivery again.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Innerzone I think you are more valueable in than out. For starters because you care.

Thank you for saying that. I honestly think that unless I can feel good about the outcome of this decision I would likely be more problematic to the cause than useful. I can still care and I can still contribute but from further away is all.

Thank you for taking so much time with this. I am sorry if I come across are argumentative or immovable. It is not my intension. I respect everyone's thoughts on this. You have all been very supportive and helpful.

I haven't talk about this with anyone else. I know what I would hear and I am not up. It always feels belittling and I end up feeling like an alien joke. I don't understand why they think it is so cut and dry. Take the money you fool!! So I don't say anything. I try to figure it out on my own. Thanks for being here.

I will let you all know how it unfolds. I should hear something tomorrow. I will admit to another undercurrent in the story...... I am as scared as hell that the job is too big for me anyways. I am still very fragile emotionally. Stress is a killer issue still and I am afraid I won't make it through the year. I thought I was up to this. I have made some gains this year but now I have to wonder. I haven't admitting until now, even to myself how nervous I am about making this long of a commitment.

And now looking at how this one blip has me in a state of confusion; symptoms flaring up from all directions; mental and physical exhaustion from trying to keep the flares to a minimum.... to regain some balance…. and based on comments that suggest I am coming from way out in left field on this..... I wonder more and more if I really am well enough to go either way.

I think now that I have fussed about this so much I just want to run away. Run away from the job; run away from my brain. I think I best take the evening to pull everything down a few notches. Some mindful time dwelling on what is beautiful sounds very appealing right now. Sleep will be even better.

Interesting. The town I spoke of was about 5,000 people(!) So, oh yes, all those small town things... I am glad to hear you will be contributing your talents regardless of how things unfold.

Sooo hear you on the nervous/stress/emotional fragility thing. I struggle all the time with that too. All we can do is our best (like anyone else), take that leap of faith and try. (My most recent job I almost didn't take on. It was all wrong for me on so many different levels - skills, personality, physically even and I was soooo afraid. And to top it off, I didn't even have the least interest in such work(!) Turned out ok though. So if that small story is of any help...)

Enjoy your relaxation time and sweet s to you!