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…

Job Descriptions and Procedures Manual

In my last post, I mentioned the idea that Institutional Memory can be captured in permanent records outside of the employees themselves. Two of the common methods for doing so are humble documents you’ve probably seen around the office before, and never thought much of: Job Descriptions and Procedures Manuals. Like many other business school staples (mission statements, operating philosophies, business plans, etc.) these two documents are often seen as some kind of magic bullet, as in “All we have to do is document all of our procedures, and everything will be perfect!”

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Very few documents can effect real change in an organization just by existing, or even through the act of being created. In this case, job descriptions are often treated as mere busywork by line personnel – something that Human Resources requires us to write down for some reason of their own, probably because they are too lazy to do it. Quite often people will recycle the same description of a job for years, rather than update it to reflect the responsibilities of the position as it currently exists. Procedures manuals are even worse – too often, line personnel will be insulted at the very idea of creating a set of instructions for their jobs, as if this implies that they don’t know what they are supposed to be doing or are so disloyal and/or flighty that they might quit at any moment, without warning.

The truth is a bit less dramatic. A typical Job Description is simply a catalog of the tasks, functions and responsibilities of the job, along with an overview of anyone the position supervises and who the position reports to, salary and benefits offered, and so on. A well-written description will also include occasional and back-up duties, the positions backed up and supported by the position, and the minimum qualifications needed to do the job. If any of these things are not obvious, it is possible to add information to the job description or create additional/supplementary text to explain why a given position backs up someone in another department, or why a rather mundane accounting position requires CPA or MBA credentials, a background in auditing, and certification as a Level I Hazardous Materials Responder, for example.

Similarly, a procedures manual needs to document what the members of a work group actually do on a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly basis, not just what senior management would have them do. If there is a chance (however unlikely) that all of the Accountants II will have to put on coveralls and respirators and go outside to mop up a toxic chemical spill at some point, then the procedures manual needs to explain how the unit goes about completing this task, and what the more junior accountants and bookkeepers are supposed to do while the Accountants II are occupied with the chemical spill. If a given team member has to fill out all of the office supply requisitions, then that individual’s job description should reflect that duty and the procedures manual should reference getting all office supply requests to that person before the deadline for each week’s order, whether this is an official job duty or not.

Ultimately, of course, there is no way to record all of the minutiae of a job in any written description; to really get all of the nuances of the position across you will need a more advanced and comprehensive way of transferring the experience…

But that’s our next topic…