I want to share a little incident that occurred at my previous place of employment. I was in the third year of working at this organization and had also moved into my third position. We had a big boss who was often known as a hot-head and unreasonable. I did everything in my power to avoid any type of interaction with him. I just so happened to be in an assistant position where he had to come in and sign papers for an agreement with me. Said agreement was constructed by a team, which was led by him. Conflict of interest? I saw it that way. We get to the part that involved finances and he begins to question me as to why I thought that price he was to pay was reasonable. I looked at him dead in the eye and asked, “why would you agree to the construction of this document if you felt it was wrong? I am not the one who created this document, you and seven other people are the ones who did. So the next time you are at the table, please bring your concerns to the committee who created it.” He was not happy with my response, he wrote a complaint and tried to have me fired. It of course did not work because my boss was very understanding.

When I think about this incident and how much I have learned about interacting with others in the workplace, I can see that I could have handled that a lot better than I did. I would have avoided a huge headache. It was ethically wrong of me to dismiss his concerns. Maybe he was in disagreement with the prices to begin with, but the way I saw it was completely different. It was wrong for me to assume this; it would have been far more ethical to provide him with a safe place to express his concerns in confidence, take notes, validate his concerns, and then forward to the committee. It is now my goal to go forward without judgement and to ensure that I can respond in an ethical manner.