Ethics Tools: The Viral Test

Just to jog your memory: the purpose of writing "Ethics Tools" is to offer up some useful ways to approach the pesky and the powerful ethical issues in your working life. So far, we have talked about two tools: stripping away a bad actor's knighthood and conducting a YouTube test before you go live.

This week, we can consider what today can be called "The Viral Test." The Viral Test is one which is relevant when you are thinking about taking an action that all by itself, alone, seems quite appropriate. And even ethical or the right thing to do. So for example, suppose you are a manager, and one of your employees always misses deadlines and when he or she actually gets the work done, it is really not anything you would want to put your name on. You believe that you have tried every kind of motivational technique available, except for the one technique that your old coach used whenever he thought that your own work habits were lacking. You are thinking about breaking some furniture, and going into an old-fashioned coaches' rage and rant.

Now, you could use the other ethics tools for this scenario. So that, if you decide to throw computers at walls and dump over the waste baskets and the shredders everywhere, you could imagine that this would be seen worldwide on YouTube. In this way, the YouTube Test might prevent you from doing this. Likewise, you could imagine that such an action seen by your own bosses on YouTube would make them think that you shouldn't get a knighthood, or more likely a promotion. And in this way, you would have thought about relying on the stripping the knighthood test to evaluate your actions.

Even so, it might be better in this case to rely on your imagining that your approach goes viral and is used by all managers everywhere who for various reasons think that seeing you on YouTube do it, makes it OK for them. Now, here is the problem for them, and ultimately for you. While you may have a reason, even a good reason to break furniture over your employee's failures, all other managers may not have such reasons or any reason at all to rage and rant at their own employees.

By making the action universal and thus  a "must do" action for all managers, then you have created alot of raging and ranting managers, not to mention having destroyed alot of serviceable office furniture.

There is one obvious problem, of course, with the viral approach. For example, not all viruses are bad or harmful. So, if you were considering an action toward your employee that did not involve verbally abusing everyone in your wake and physically destroying furniture, but instead was effective in getting the problem employee to do good work, then all other managers with problem employees of the same type would want to you to pass it on.  But the circumstances must match and that is a very difficult  match to make.

I like this test alot. I use it especially when I am in a self-righteous frame of mind, and prepared to do something that seems fair on its face when I do it, but pretty unfair when I command everyone else in my position to take the same action.