It happened again today. Someone came to my door to do a little maintenance work, and his truck was parked in front of the fire hydrant. I had to politely ask him to move his truck. Luckily, this gentleman didn’t get rude or nasty. He just turned around, looked at his truck, saw it was directly in front of the hydrant and moved it. I’m not usually so lucky. The normal reaction from visitors and neighbors of my little community is one of hateful, ugly name calling and verbal abuse. How DARE I insist that people move their vehicles away from the fire hydrant? Nothing’s going to happen anyway…. Well friends, if we believe this why do we pay for →
Blog
Ethical awareness is growing. Can you feel it? It’s in the air and it’s in the news. Penn State, Congress, Wall Street and Countrywide have all been skewered for big ethical misconduct lately. It’s gotten so bad that after ten minutes of watching the nightly news my blogs and e-zines are practically begging to write themselves. Even in fiction – popular books like the Harry Potter series – do we see the issue of ethics in the following statement: “Soon we must make a choice between what is right and what is easy.” (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) So ethics is everywhere, if we choose to recognize the words and actions as ethics. There we go. The word →
Somehow, I’ve gotten out of the discipline of writing and blogging weekly. I don’t really know how, except that a variety of events, tasks and activities got in my way and distracted me from the weekly grind of writing. Writing a blog is really a simple thing, especially when I’m using Posterous which allows me to write a post as if I were composing an email and voila! It magically appears on my blog! And I think it would be safe to say there has been an absolute abundance of ethics topics to talk about. All I need to do is watch 10 minutes of the nightly news and my blogs practically could write themselves! So why don’t they? Write →
I’ve just had an experience with feedback that has left me feeling defeated and wondering how in the world I can even dare to trust people. After delivering a typical presentation I walked away feeling pretty good about it based on the interaction with the group, the types of questions asked, and the discussion that followed with individuals in the group. I asked for feedback from the leader of the group and was told the general consensus was that the topic was a rich one to explore. I opened up a huge area of discussion for the group on a topic that was of great concern to them but I didn’t go far enough into all the rabbit holes →
Ok, so I’m going way out on a limb to open a discussion about politics. I normally steer clear of this because I don’t want to start arguments, but enough is enough! And besides, newsletter readers have been requesting me to take e-Factor!® to Washington or have the local politicians play the game. There’s hope that this might “straighten them out.” Funny concept, that one, and my first reaction is to run away as far and fast as I can. Is it possible to “straighten out” our politics today? I Don’t know, but I fear the worst. What I do know is that we’re now seeing ethical dilemmas of such immense proportions that even I reserve my judgment over whether →
– and what we all can learn from him! This is the story of the power each and every one of us has within ourselves to change the world. Yes, you read that right. So how does this relate to ethics? By the end of this article you should be able to answer that for yourself. The information for this story came from a segment on 60 Minutes that aired February 20, 2011. The fruit vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi , from a small town in Tunisia, couldn’t take the corruption any more. A municipal official confiscated his scale, worth $100, and Bouazizi knew he’d have to pay a bribe to get it back. He complained to the official, and the →
It sure feels good…! For the first time in quite a few years, I’ve finished all my accounting early and turned over all the information to my trusted Tax advisor. Whew! I hadn’t realized how much of a relief it would be to get this done early! Why is it that we put this work off until the very end, waiting until the last minute and adding more pressure than necessary??? As a business coach, I’ve been known to advise my clients to do all sorts of things to break the logjam and get those unpleasant tasks done. Things like break the tasks up into small bite-sized chunks, create a reward for doing the job, work on the task early →
What an amazing couple of weeks we’ve lived through, wouldn’t you agree? For those of you who’ve stopped watching the news because it is so filled with hate and anger, I hope you broke your self-imposed exile to witness history unfolding in Egypt. If not, you missed such a rare opportunity to see something this momentous happen in our lifetime. We’ve had a few of these opportunities to witness history over the last few years – some US events like our market crash and its reverberating impact on other countries, and some International events like the Chilean mining rescue that had us all glued to our seats. However, nothing has happened that has as much promise for a new world as →
What Were They Thinking??! First we heard about Captain Honors, commander of a Navy aircraft carrier, making a “raunchy video” to relieve the stress of combat for his crew. Then we heard about the Glaxo Smith Kline (GSK) drug scandal and the whistleblower that exposed bad processes resulting in drug mix-ups, contamination, and ultimately a $750M fine for adulterated drugs. My biggest question is this – What Were They Thinking??? Supposedly these people are intelligent, hard-working individuals who have years of experience under their belts. And yet, they seem to be exhibiting an amazing lack of professional judgment and ethical conduct. Did they believe they wouldn’t get caught? Did they believe they could plead ignorance or hide the details under →
Monday night on the ABC show Nightline a segment aired called “The College Cheating Culture. The segment said that 70% of the students admitting to cheating. The segment focused on students hiring others to write papers for them. As a CPA it pained me to hear that the “ghost writer” interviewed on Nightline had been hired to write a 175-page Accounting paper for $2,000. The ghost writer admitted to making a good living, and that it is perfectly legal – he “pays taxes.” He also said that the parents were right there with the students, sometimes even writing the checks for the papers themselves and following up with the writers if their kids didn’t get A grades. Wow. I’m almost →