Trust and Integrity
When there is a situation that you know is wrong there aren’t a lot of ways you can handle it. You can avoid it, you can ignore it, or you can try to do something about it.
Sure, easy to say. Sometimes life and people hand us difficult situations. There are times when our own choices can affect not only ourselves, but also our family, friends, and other innocent people. Doesn’t seem fair but then life isn’t always fair.
I’m by no means a rich man, like most of you I’ve had to work most of my life just to live from paycheck to paycheck. About the only thing that I own outright is my word, and so that means a great deal to me. I don’t give my word lightly.
When I do work for someone else by implication I am giving my word that I will do everything I can to both complete whatever my assignment is, as well as to use my knowledge and experience wherever it’s necessary. I’m funny that way.
The bitch of it is that sometimes people hire an "expert" and then decide they don’t really need an expert after all when they find out what it will cost them. It’s funny that an employer will pay thousands of dollars to display a picture in their front office so all their customers will see how classy they are, but when asked to make a change that may SAVE them thousands and cost them relatively little, they refuse. The operative word here was of course "change".
Having been a technical person for much of my life has, if nothing less, taught me patience. I’m used to questions; most questions have an answer. Being an honest person myself mistrust is probably the hardest thing for me to handle. Just the pure unreasoning trust of something simply because it isn’t understood, because people don’t have the background to make a judgment themselves, or because people have "control" or "cultural" issues to me makes no sense. All of which of course is why they hire experts to make the recommendations for them and then refuse to make the necessary changes.
What this boils down to is that sometimes I’ve been put between a rock and a hard place. What do I do when I recommend a technical solution to an issue that can solve a legal issue, but the ignorance and mistrust of my client doesn’t allow implementation? Ignoring a legal issue can be dangerous, avoiding it is probably only putting off the inevitable, the only solution is to address it and make necessary changes. Letting a legal issue go unresolved is simply asking for trouble.
I’d like to point out that for the most part this isn’t a moral judgment. As far as I’m concerned what people do on their own computers is their own business and if I know about it I can certainly warn them, but I’m not here to police home computers nor has anyone paid me to do that. When they pay me to tell them what to do on their "business" computers it becomes MY business because then I’m the responsible party. Sorry folks I am not going to jail or paying a heavy fine because some idiot decided to ignore my warnings and "kill the messenger" because they didn’t like the message. Neither am I going to simply sit by quietly while their mistakes catch up with them in terms of downtime and additional costs paid to me to correct. It’s called integrity.
Publication: MBC (www and/or print)
Publication Date: 10/31/2004
Trust and Integrity