Ethical Dilemmas

ETHICAL DILEMMAS
Sheri Smith
March 17, 2016

Long ago, when I worked in sales, I heard a story from one of my colleagues about a precarious predicament she had been in shortly before I was hired. Let’s call my colleague “Tammy” for the sake of clarity. One of Tammy’s biggest commission accounts was with a client who happened to be married to her closest friend. When her co-worker, my predecessor, began asking to come on sales calls to this particular client, Tammy didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t until the girl began visiting him on her own (both on company time and after hours) that Tammy finally put two and two together and surmised that their “business” was likely being done in his office with the door closed and the curtains drawn. Her suspicions were confirmed when she confronted the co-worker and asked the question she promptly wished she hadn’t.

Her dilemma was pretty clear. Knowing full well that she would lose her largest commission and potentially her closest friendship, and with the possibility of her co-worker being fired if the boss caught wind of the resultant fall-out, should Tammy warn her friend that her husband was doing “business” in the nude?

If you were Tammy, what would you do?

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