Ethics make us powerful

Several years ago, Susie Sainte, Sam and Joe the Tribal Worker were all on the same board. They had found out that the program director was misusing funds and had agreed to vote at the next meeting to have him removed. Before the meeting, the program director went to Joe and offered to give his son a job. He also offered to give Susie’s company a contract to evaluate their program and suggested that Sam that he attend a meeting for the project in Hawaii, paid with project funds.

Sam and Susie turned down these offers, but at the next meeting, were they ever surprised when Joe voted with two other board members to keep the project director. Sam and Susie resigned from the board the same week Joe’s son started his new high-paying job. Both swore they would never have anything to do with Joe and his unethical behavior again.

Last week, Susie ran into Sam and he could not wait to tell her how unhappy he was that he had agreed to do the staff training for a program where Joe the Tribal Worker was now the training manager. Joe had great difficulty getting anyone to work with him because of his known unethical ways. He had one of his staff members, Sally, contact Sam and ask him to do the training.

Susie asked in surprise,

“Why would you do that? I thought you said after Joe completely lied about that board meeting and sold his vote to the program director for a job for his son that you would never work for him again.”