The pressure of situations can make speaking up difficult to do. However, it is an important aspect of the practice of business ethics. This episode offers practical ways you can find and use your voice.
Podcast:
Episode Transcript
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00:03 Cindy Moehring: Welcome to this edition of The BIS, The Business Integrity School, your resource for practical tips from a business ethics pro who's been there. I'm Cindy Moehring, the founder and executive chair of the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative at the Sam M. Walton College of Business. Joining me today is Dr. Matt Waller, Dean of the Walton College.
00:23 Matt Waller: One of the principles is that we're supposed to speak up and let our voice be heard. Why is that so important?
00:31 Cindy Moehring: Well, because you're responsible for your own actions and the consequences from those actions, if you know someone's asking you to do something that is unethical, can be dire and in some situations it can not only affect your own life, but the lives of lots of other people. So you really have to think beyond yourself in a situation like that and figure out... If you need to just take a break and not interact right then with the person who's asking you to do something that you know is wrong, and figure out how you gonna address the situation, better to that than to just rush ahead. It can have disastrous consequences.
01:08 Matt Waller: Well, at work we're often so busy, it's like we can't get our to-do list done in a day, and it just keeps building. And I think there's a tendency to think, well, this will blow over, or someone else will take care of this, but that can have disastrous consequences, and I know you've talked to me about one that's been very disastrous.
01:32 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, I actually watched Chernobyl recently, it's one of the mini-series on HBO, it's won a ton of awards, and so we sat down and watch that and it's chock-full of just lots of life lessons in addition to being a really good mini-series on HBO. But that whole situation, which truly it was a nuclear meltdown of a power plant in Ukraine.
01:53 Matt Waller: 1986.
01:54 Cindy Moehring: 1986, and it erupted and we'll talk about why and how that came to be, but it spread just nuclear debris all over Western Europe, and Russia and Ukraine, and pretty much that whole part of the world. Lots of people died, and it happened because of the simple act of one individual that didn't speak up and use his voice.
02:16 Matt Waller: And that area is still unusable, right?
02:19 Cindy Moehring: I think it is still unusable today. And you think about the first responders that rushed into that situation thinking that was just a fire, another day, I need to go put out a fire, and didn't realize that they were being exposed to all of this radiation.
02:34 Matt Waller: And people are still having reactions to it today, they're still being hurt today.
02:41 Cindy Moehring: So let's talk about that story.
02:46 Matt Waller: Yeah. What did they not speak up about it?
02:49 Cindy Moehring: Yeah. So Shift Manager was there working with the team because they were supposed to run a test that day on the nuclear reactor, and they were supposed to make sure that everything was working okay, and his team came to him and said, "Look, these readings don't look right for this one nuclear reactor, we don't think we should run the test." Because if... It's like running a test on something that you know is already broken, you know what's gonna happen in that situation, and it looked like it was already broken. So the Shift Manager was convinced that they weren't gonna run the test, that they shouldn't, his team gave him the data, and data's important to support your decisions.
03:23 Cindy Moehring: And then a busy boss walks in the door, and asks the Shift Manager, "What are we doing? Why are we not running the test? We're supposed to be running the test, it's already supposed to be under way." He tries to explain to his boss, who's very busy, the reasons why he wasn't gonna run the test and his boss simply wouldn't listen to him and was insistent, "No, this is what we're supposed to be doing. You're the Shift Manager. We're supposed to run the test, I don't care what your data says, run the test." And so he did, and when he ran the test, the nuclear reactor blew up, and that's what caused the whole event that many of us who lived through it, actually only know as Chernobyl, and it was that, Oh, that really bad accident, but it was all because one person didn't speak up on his shift.
04:09 Matt Waller: And you know, again, as leaders, leaders have to make it clear that they want people to speak up, and then they can't reprimand them if they do speak up. They've got to praise them and really just show that, yeah, we want this kind of behavior in our organization. So what are some practical tips that we could take to move forward with this?
04:32 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, I think the practical tips here are... I think about the person who's in that shift manager situation, because that could literally be anyone who was in that situation, you just talked about, what a leader should do. Practical tips, I think if you find yourself in that situation is you really do have to plan ahead, you need to think about what you would do before you're in that situation, and what you would do if someone and your boss actually does tell you to do something that you know is wrong. You need to practice how you would react in that situation, and do it ahead of time, it's almost like, Matt if somebody were to ask you to jump into the deep end of the pool and swim, and you've never even jumped off a diving board before.
05:12 Matt Waller: What would you do?
05:13 Cindy Moehring: So what would you do? So you really do have to practice that, you have to learn how to swim, you have to learn how to jump off a diving board, you have to learn how to get in a pool. And that means practicing through these situations.
05:22 Matt Waller: Well, there's two things that come to my mind, one is that again, we're all busy, so people have to understand that really is worth it, right?
05:34 Cindy Moehring: Right, it really is.
05:34 Matt Waller: It's a top priority. The second thing that comes to my mind about this is that I think thinking through it is important, but for many people, they probably need to write it out, because I think that if they just think about it, it might not settle down into them deeply, whereas if they write it out, it's very clear, and sometimes writing makes things more clear and clarifies your own logic.
06:00 Cindy Moehring: Right. Or if you're already in the business world, and in addition to writing it down, you could go find a trusted source, someone else in the company that is trusted, whether it's gonna be your HR Department, or your legal or Ethics and Compliance, but find somebody that... And if it's not your own boss that's asking you to do it. You can go talk to your boss about it. Take a partner and just talk through it, and there are lots of strategies, and we can get into that in further episodes, but there are ways to deal with it so that you can defuse the situation by not reacting right in the moment and creating some time and space in there, so that you can get the courage that you need to speak up in the right way, in a diplomatic way that works through the situation, in a way that's gonna be effective for everyone involved.
06:42 Matt Waller: I think this is another reason why people need mentors too.
06:46 Cindy Moehring: Yeah, mentors help a lot in these situations.
06:49 Matt Waller: If you've got a really good mentor that you've been working with for a long time, then you feel comfortable to call them or contact them, say, "Hey, my boss is wanting me to do this, What do you think?" And that could give some good guidance as well.
07:06 Cindy Moehring: And you know what, people may think this doesn't happen in business, but it does, and it does oftentimes just because of the pressure of the situation, and they may be misreading what their boss is actually telling them to do, but other times they're not. This isn't just a movie, a Chernobyl situation that happened in 1986. These situations do arise in business.
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07:29 Cindy Moehring: Thanks for listening to today's episode of The BIS, The Business Integrity School. You can find us on YouTube, Google SoundCloud, iTunes, or wherever you find your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us, and you can find us by searching The BIS, that's one word T-H-E-B-I-S. Tune in next time for more practical tips from a pro.
Cindy Moehring is the founder and executive chair of the Business Integrity Leadership Initiative
at the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. She recently
retired from Walmart after 20 years, where she served as senior vice president, Global
Chief Ethics Officer, and senior vice president, U.S. Chief Ethics and Compliance
Officer.
