You are never really ready for those experiences that are normally so far away they don’t show up on your moral compass. The first time I was approached from that angle it was really a shock, I didn’t know how to answer.
I felt like I grew up in tinytown USA where everything is like you see it in a 1950’s movie or television show – simply perfect. This first time was purely on a personal level. I don’t remember exactly how it was phrased but basically my colleague posed a hypothetical question about how I would react to a case of marital infidelity. Of course this isn’t a question you should take home and think about at your leisure but rather one you need to answer on the spot. I pretty much blew it and as I was working with that guy for a while, it seemed to me that there was a small block between us but nothing that affected my work, his work or my career (i hope).
Well, after moving to the big city and encountering people and situations from all over the world, I thought I was pretty much on my game. Sure I had odd questions ranging from economics, world war II, current regional conflicts, even inter-office intrigue.
Imagine my surprise when one day, right after a meeting on how to setup the system my contact asked me to basically “take one for the team”. He didn’t want me to break anything or do anything to affect the production environment or cause any real material harm, he just wanted that I slow down, well specifically slow down on a single specific configuration for an upcoming release. Well, actually he wanted me to do a bit more than that, I should delay my work for about a week and the result should have a single error that causes that configuration to be rejected.
Just a small rejection, fix the “bug” and re-release the change and be happy. Wow, that seems a bit dishonest, so I ran it by my colleague for his input. I was actually surprised to find out that this had happened to him as well more than a decade back as well at a different company. He didn’t seem to be too surprised when he heard about the situation, nor did he think that there was any point in not following the directions.
More to the point, my friend and colleague suggested that while I perform these duties I should do a small random sample for my test and hand it over to him. That way he can also give things a once over and thus, at the minimum, spread the blame a bit.
I suggested that if the past was any indicator, the poor testing that takes place in this project would probably miss any defects, at which point my friend suggested I have a brief chat with my contact person. The reason is that if I know their complete time-line I could “retest” everything and find the error myself.
That all sounds well and good but isn’t it a bit of an ethical problem? Yes, no and maybe. It turns out that I don’t actually work directly for the company who wants the work done. I am an external consultant who works for another company who is selling my services to their customer. Well, that description is actually inaccurate. I am a freelancer who is working for an agency who is working for a consulting company who is working for their client.
Everyone in that chain will be happy, get money and good reviews if I do what I am asked by the actual client while the contrary will also happen if I don’t perform as required.
Although this does sound like an ethically challenged situation, it isn’t like a competitor is paying me off to adversely effect their competition, or a company paying a bribe to guarantee one companies bid is accepted over company’s.
What should I do? Well, perhaps I was thinking that my actions were actually a much larger part of the overall picture. Call it fate or bad luck but a series of other events had essentially the same effect – illness of someone from the group, sickness of a child, difficulties in the release mechanisms, not to mention the inflexibility of the work processes.
What makes this surprising is that this isn’t taking place in Somalia but in a country that is considered less corrupt than the United States.