Paid For Unethical Acts

Rather than be annoyed or outraged by Minister Clement's behaviour in the long form census discussion, I am instead saddened. This Globe and Mail article shows very clearly the curious juxtaposition of two seemingly incompatible versions of the same person: one who immediately reacts to save another human being's life at no small risk to himself, and the other a stone-faced political robot who is immune to reason and good sense in the pursuit of maintaining an absurd public position.

I can only wonder how one person can rationalize this degree of inconsistent behaviour. Tony Clement is clearly an intelligent and sensible person, and so I am sure he must struggle with this to a degree in at least the privacy of his own thoughts. There is a real dilemma here that is not easily resolved: how does a person with a strong ethical foundation justify and deal with having to act unethically in pursuit of a paycheque or other life goals? Surely if he were to back down from his stance on the census he would may get some immediate applause for a principled decision but his political career, or more, could end up lying in ruins.

He is hardly alone when dealing with this. I am willing to bet that anyone reading this has not once but numerous times found themselves instructed to obfuscate, mislead or even outright lie by the company or institution paying your salary. In most cases you will do so, even if you do so with your insides in a knot of shame or disgust. Some can manage it without any qualms whatsoever, even when they are their own boss. It's common.

As one example, a customer service supervisor at Rogers explicitly lied to me over the phone about the nature of a long-standing service problem and what they were doing to expeditiously solve the problem. I had been transferred to her when, after many days of unsatisfactory action on their part, I demanded to cancel my service entirely. I didn't know she had lied until a few hours later when I got the real back-story from another Rogers employee who was also upset at not getting the support needed to get my problem resolved.

I can imagine that she is in every other respect a fine individual. But when told how to perform her job, in order to continue earning a salary and advance her career, she shoved her ethical values into a back pocket and did as she was told to do. It can be very easy for any of us to do the very same thing. I am myself less than innocent in this respect; many times I found myself promising customers what I knew very well the company I was representing could not possibly deliver. The way I compensated for this was by afterward pounding on others within the company to somehow get the job done. Even so I always felt soiled by the experience.

Minister Clement is now in this very position. Hopefully he can find a comfortable middle position that will allow him to feel he's done his job while also resolving the ethical dilemma. A bigger question may well be, will Stephen Harper allow him to do so.