Double Duty

Welcome back to Contemplative Being!

To be perfectly honest I was not entirely sure what to write about this week, this in no way indicates that there is a lack of ethical concerns going on in the country that would be wishful thinking. In order to get some ideas flowing I did what I imagine most other people do these days to get ideas, ask Google of course. I typed “ethics in the news” and clicked search and was instantly bombarded no less than 160,000,000 results all in just .43 seconds. YAY GOOGLE! It would be easy to get completely overwhelmed with all those results so I decided to click on the first one which happens to be a great example of conflict of interest.

The story takes place in beautiful Hawaii where the state Ethics Commission is looking into potential conflicts of interest at the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ enforcement division. A complaint has been filed alleging potential misconduct by some department staff that do part-time work for Sodexo. The complaint centers on an acting chief, one of his deputies and the deputies’ secretary. The division in which they all work is the one responsible for policing the state’s costal waterways to ensure that their ecological resources are safeguarded. Now, the problem is not having a part-time job, nor is it that all three of them have part-time jobs working with Sodexo. Although I could see how that could raise concern. The problem is in fact two fold. The primary issue is that between the chief and deputy the roles are reversed at the part-time job. To explain that in other terms at the state job the chief, Jason Redulla supervises the deputy, Kirk Smythe however, at the Sodexo job Kirk supervises Jason. It does not take an ethics expert to see how this could be a conflict of interest. The second problem is regarding Smythe’s secretary whom as stated earlier also works for Sodexo part-time. The complaint alleges that she has been using state resources such as her work computer and cellphone while on the clock with state’s time to do work for her part-time gig. Again, not hard to see how this is violates ethical standards.

A conflict of interest is defined as a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests financial, emotional or otherwise, where one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation of the individual or organization. To put this in context of the situation Jason the chief may be inclined to give special treatment to Kirk in hopes that Kirk will give Jason special treatment at the part-time job. When it comes to perceived ethical misconduct whether or not any misconduct actually took place is irrelevant. The damage is done simply by the fact that something unethical could have taken place. This creates a sense of mistrust by the public regardless of there being any merit to the claim and for that reason it is essential to avoid a situation that could be perceived as unethical. With regards to the secretary it appears that the problem is misconduct rather than conflict of interest. There is still potential conflict of interest in this situation on behalf of Kirk because he may know his secretary is using state resources and time to do work for Sodexo and he may be looking the other way since he works for them too.

Getting involved in potential conflicts of interest and straight out misconduct is of course unethical. Sometimes it is difficult to know that the ethical decision is and in such cases a useful tool to figure it out is the ethics triad. The ethics triad consists of analyzing a situation by results, rules and virtue. When analyzing the results one must ask the question of what outcome is in the interest of the greater good and would you be ok with reading the result of your decision on the front page of the paper. In rules analysis one must think about rules or laws governing the decision at hand. What do the rules say is the right thing to do? Lastly using the virtue analysis one must ask oneself what kind of person are you. Based on one’s own morals is the outcome of the decision acceptable. This tool does a good job of evaluating decisions and perhaps if the people in this story would have used this approach to evaluate their decision they would have reconsidered it. Many states have ethics commissions that monitor the activities of state employees and others that do dealings with the state so it may take a while but sooner or later the unethical behavior will be caught.

Thanks for reading!   

Related Links

EXCLUSIVE: Commission investigates DLNR ethics complaint. (2015, February 25). Retrieved February 25, 2015, from http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/28194403/exclusive-commission-investigates-dlnr-ethics-complaint