The Ethics of Exceptions

This week I had a number of students ask me for exceptions to existing class policy for a variety of reasons. Some of them had real-world commitments that will interfere with scheduled events (including at least one case where it's a job interview conflicting with an exam), while others had managed to screw something up and were asking for clemency - or at least an extension of deadline. This isn't my first class at MSU, and accordingly I've made provision for most of these questions in the syllabus, including instructions for how and when it is acceptable to ask for an exception to our usual rules, but that hasn't kept some of my students from ignoring instructions, blowing off deadlines, or just doing what they want to do (instead of what I told them to do) and then requesting a special exception for them alone. In other words, it's a typical week in the life of pretty much every classroom teacher, ever. But it did get me thinking about the larger ethical question as it applies to life away from the classroom...

Let's consider, for example, the case of a line manager and an employee who wants permission to do something that isn't normally permitted under company regulations. In some cases, of course, this may involve violations of Federal law, state law, local ordinances, the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, the laws of business, the laws of physics, the laws of economics, or may simply involve complete fiduciary misconduct, in which case the line manager can just point out that such an exception will get both the manager and the employee fired, sent to Federal prison, or in extreme cases, killed (either by offended stockholders, offended customers, offended physicists, or by the aforementioned laws of physics). But sometimes you will get a request that isn't illegal or counter to company policy, but is outside the scope of normal operations. How do we evaluate such a request?

First off, we need to consider how granting such a request will impact our regular operations. Giving someone an hour off of work because a close relative needs them to donate a pint of blood for a critical operation isn't a circumstance that will happen often, nor should missing one hour out of a 40-hour (or possibly 50-hour or 60-hour) work week make a lot of difference to the productivity of the unit as a whole. And even if multiple members of the team are called upon to do this, the overall impact on work accomplished shouldn't amount to much, especially when compared to the negative effect that denying such a request would have. Making that exception for anything less critical, however, will almost certainly have consequences...

Once we have made even the most minor exception for even the most benign reason, the issue can always be raised that we did so in another case, but are not willing to do so in this case. In practice, this means that if we allow a twenty-year veteran of our department to leave work an hour early on a Friday when everything is done for the week and no rush projects are expected we will almost certainly have to deal with the department’s resident troublemaker demanding time off during the middle of the work day in the midst of a major crisis on the grounds that we made an exception for the other guy. And heaven help us if the troublemaker is able to claim that favoritism was extended to the other employee or that discrimination is being practiced against them…

No one wants to be the sort of by-the-book douche-nozzle who insists that everyone clock in and out on the dot of starting/ending time every day. But by the same token, no one wants to be having to explain why an exception was made that one time but can’t be this time, either. Ultimately, the reason companies have rules is so that everyone does get treated the same way, and the reason some managers are so dogmatic about obeying them is simply because of the consequences if they don’t. So I have to ask: is it worth the cost to morale to have set rules and consistently enforce them, even when the “kindly” thing to do would mean making exceptions? Is it worth having everyone break the rules whenever they want to (or claim unfair preferences were made whenever they can’t) in return for showing compassion when you want to? Where do you draw that line, and who gets to draw it?

It’s worth thinking about…