Spirit Lake Consulting Forum

B) I would choose, because his wife came along using tribal funds. Unless she was a employed member or had a reason to attend the Summit from a Tribal program, then this is a Ethical and definately a Moral violation of bad judgement. But, then again I see similar situations happening on our reservation.
A) As I stated above his wife used tribal funds and there was no justification for her to use these funds. Whether or not she needed to be there was more of a personal decision and again she, as well as her husband have some serious moral issues. Not to mention the ethic violations the tribal council member is committing. To me this is classified in most cases as a misdemeaner, but a Felony is being committed, if they knowingly violate the law. I wonder what the tribal laws would stipulate for these types of ethical violations?

You know, I think almost everyone says the same as you two, but I see this behavior happen all the time, on tribal funds, university funds, company funds.

I am working on the Tribal Leaders with Character course today, and one of the references Erich sent me said this

"... feelings, laws, and social norms can deviate from what is ethical. So it is necessary to constantly examine one's standards to ensure that they are reasonable and well-founded."

I think it is very true as far as social norms. When you are in an environment where people do this sort of thing all the time, you do it and don't think twice about it. I know people who go to the same conferences every year to go out and party on a company-paid vacation. These people work for private corporations, state governments and a few of them work for tribal programs. Interestingly, these people seem to hang out together, while the boring people like me who actually go to the meetings also have lunch together, go out together in the evenings. It is rare to see one person from an organization who takes a meeting, training or conference very seriously and the rest are out sight-seeing. It is very difficult to maintain ethical standards when the social norms in your organization are different. Look at Enron, or, for a historical example, Watergate, or all of the people who broke treaties with  the tribes.

Sometimes the solution is to find a different group. If you are talking about who you have lunch with at a conference that is  possible. If you work with people who violate these standards all the time, though, it is more difficult.

What I try to do is think about if the person who is paying for this trip (tribal members, government agency staff, university, etc.) knew I was doing this, would they object.

In some cases, I have brought one of my children along on a trip to Washington, D.C. or some other place I think they would like to go. I have used my frequent flyer miles to pay for their tickets, or bought them myself, and then they stayed in the same hotel room with me for free. Since it costs my clients nothing extra, they don't object.

That brings up a question that I have been wondering about for a long time. Why don't people do their jobs? Here you are, being paid a fair amount of money to be the director of a project, or an accountant or a clerk or whatever it is you do. You come in two hours late, do some work, so you are obviously capable of working. Then you run to town and spend two hours at Wal-Mart, visit a friend in the hospital and come back to work for another two hours, only to leave work early. The next day, you don't come in at all, driving to Grand Forks to visit family. The next day is Friday, you come in, work for the morning, pick up your paycheck and then take the afternoon off because you have things to do to get ready for the weekend, like buy groceries.

How can people not be bothered by this kind of unethical behavior? How do they justify it to themselves? I mean, here is someone who worked six hours over three days and got paid for 24 hours. How is that not stealing? If you make $20 an hour, that is $360 you got paid for work you didn't do. How is that any different than going in, loading up a printer, a couple of calculators and a filing cabinet that belong to the tribe and taking them home to your house for your own use? How is that any different than just helping yourself to $360 out of the cash register?

Here is my second question.. why do the other employees not say anything? Even the supervisors don't say anything most of the time. I just don't get it.

Honestly, I just think that people simply do not care. People are always looking for the easy way out but that does not mean everyone is inclined to act this way. I just think that if an individual can see a way of getting something without having to do anything for it they are going to test the waters, if they don't get caught then of course they are going to do it again. The only thing I can imagine that will hinder someone from doing this is if they have a strong belief in what is truly and ethically right and wrong, if they proceeded anyway they would most likely feel a tremendous amount of guilt and their lesson will be learned. Obviously ethics is something that can't just be thrown at a person and immediately they will understand. It is something that begins with our parents in our youth but as we know many do not have ethical parents either. It seems to be a miserale cycle, but it does have a chance to be reversed.

Willie is right about the value of guilt. These days, instilling guilt has a bad name. "My mom guilted me into it it."  "When you go on like that,you make me feel guilty."

Sometimes, you SHOULD feel guilty, because you did something that was wrong or dishonest, and you SHOULD feel bad about it.

I still remember a situation years ago when a project director wanted to count everyone that their facility served, even though their program had specific criteria for who was eligible, and a lot of people getting services didn't meet those criteria. She argued that there was plenty of money in the budget, people were getting services, and if not all of them met the original purpose of the grant, what was the harm.

I ALMOST went along with it. Like all of the things we discuss in our ethics course, there was just about every argument we discuss in that course right down the line. "We all need to get along." No sense arguing with the project director. "We need to meet  the numbers."  We really did need to show a certain number of people receiving services.... and so on.

Shortly before time to leave, I was almost the last one in the building, an employee came into my office and asked to speak with me. She said quietly, "I don't think that is right, what you and the director talked about in the meeting today. Maybe if we had to face up to the fact that we weren't serving all of the people we are supposed to we would go out and recruit the types of individuals this program was set up to help. I think we could do it instead of taking the easy way out."

Like Willie, I felt ashamed of myself that I had been willing to "go along". Like Willie, I had been brought up differently than that and it was a good thing my grandmother wasn't around at that moment because she would have probably smacked me.

Here is the really funny thing, too. Even though people are often afraid to speak up, there was no really bad outcome. I told the director we had to report the data exactly as it was. The director shrugged and went along with it and I never told anyone about the conversation I had had the night before.

So, although it is possible that an individual who has the courage to speak up will lose her job, it is also possible that she will make a change and have no negative effects whatsoever. What prevents people from speaking up, then?

Fear.

Carlos does make a good point that if you don't spend your budget you may find it cut next year. I know this is a horrifying thought to some people - but maybe you don't need that high of a budget. Maybe the money would be better spent going to support some other program that really needs it and you don't  need to go on seven trips in one year.

On the other hand, what does happen sometimes is that you don't need as much money this year because you are just starting up a project or some other very good reason, but you really do need it next year and it will hurt your program if it gets cut. One thing I recommend in that situation is spending your budget in a way that is both ethical and supports your program. For example, you could buy the plane tickets for the trips you really need to take next year three months in advance so they come out of this year's budget.

There are meetings where the tribal council addresses the members on various issues. I think a lot of people have made the point,though, that there is often a perception that what matters is not whether you met your objectives but whether you gave that person or their relative a job, whether you fired that person's relative for taking money for a travel advance  and never actually going on the trip, etc.