Unit 7 Response to Data Management and Ethics

Unit 7 Response to Data Management and Ethics


How would I handle being asked to be unethical by manipulating data? Well, this happened to me in my present position with a slight tweaking of the circumstances.

Here is my story. I worked for an attorney who the secretaries called “Evil Spawn”. I was not told about this attorney until my first day of employment. It was as if management was hiding something from me and this alone is not ethical or at least this is not good business practices and as a prior manager, I would not practice this form of deceptive management. However, I started working for the firm and had several other wonderful attorneys, so I dealt with having one bad one. I worked for this “bad” attorney for about three years, with very little conflict and thought his reputation was ill founded. In year four, his behavior changed and he came into the office less frequently and when he did, he was disorganized, curt in his behavior toward me and began asking me for answers to questions that he as an attorney should have known the answer to and or responded to others instead of me as go between. I could go on and on, rather, I will get to the point. He began to miss hearings and appointments and tried to blame me for not telling him, but I did and had documented when and how I told him (thank goodness). He asked me to cover for him and that “he would scratch my back, if I would scratch his.” I told him no, that I would not do this and that it was unethical for him as an attorney, nor was it ethical for me as a professional secretary and as you might imagine, he tried to retaliate against me. I refused to cover for him and told my boss that something was wrong with him and I suspected drug use or that medically he was ill.

One day, I called him at home because the court called me asking for him at a very important court appearance. He was at home sleeping and the client was waiting at the court for him. Bad, really bad.... He asked me to cover for this missed appearance and lie to the client and I couldn’t do this. Regardless of how I feel about my firm, of which I have shared about before, I had to protect its name, myself, the other attorneys in our firm, and of course we didn’t want to lose the client. This attorney was lying to the client and the client reported this to the manager. It was a very bad situation. This attorney also wanted me to sign his name on declarations under the penalty of perjury.

I was very worried that because he is an attorney and has much more clout and power then I do as a secretary that somehow he would manipulate the situations that had occurred and I would be held accountable. This occurs quite frequently in other firms I am sad to say.

My boss protected me from his retaliation and his employment with my firm was terminated.

If the situation was with a co-worker, it would depend on the situation; however, if asked to change or modify information or data, no I wouldn’t do that. I am not a saint, but don’t put me in a position that jeopardizes my job. This is an extreme form of selfishness.