You Want to Do WHAT? Ethical Dilemmas in Client Relationships

[Editor's note: Welcome to our newest contributor, Elizabeth Damewood Gaucher!]

photo credit: Éamonn

A friend once told me, “When clients come to me with something they want to do, I pass it through three tests. If it is not clearly illegal, flagrantly immoral, or physically dangerous, I tell them to go right ahead and do it.” For years I thought this philosophy was unique to the practice of law, but I’ve recently wondered if it should be applied in most professional work.

Often when a client comes to you, he or she is less seeking your advice than seeking your skills in implementing what they already have decided to do. This may create an ethical pull in one or two directions. The most difficult is when the client’s goal or process itself conflicts with your personal ethics.

Recording Your Concerns

We all know people who have succumbed to the pressure to go along with something they believed to be wrong, and the results are disastrous. There is no good end to that story. If you have a supervisor, talk with them in private about your concerns. Most people are supportive of working through the problem, and at the very least if you are now on record with your issue. If you are beyond ethics and into illegal territory, you must refuse participation. If you are the supervisor, you will have to have this conversation directly with the client.

Wants vs. Needs

There is a second type of more nuanced ethical dilemma: You may not think the goal or process is wrong, but you may believe it is not in the client’s best interest. We do what we do to help advance positive results for our clients, and in turn hope to garner a reputation for excellent outcomes. If we do what the client wants, and the outcomes are poor, have we truly succeeded? But if we push our own agendas and become disconnected from the heart and mind of our clients, do the outcomes matter?

Staying Connected for Everyone’s Success

We can do more to balance this equation by strategically building better, deeper relationships with our clients, and by spending more time working through the pros and cons of various decisions. There are no easy short cuts.

I would tweak the story above to say the three tests are for us as providers. Know your own business culture and standards and faithfully enforce them. If we cannot establish shared goals and understanding behind project direction, the client relationship will not be successful. That relationship is the ultimate positive outcome we all want.

How have you handled tricky ethical scenarios at work? Tell us in the comments.