Getting an employee ethics framework right: a personal guide

The worst time to work out what you will and will not do is the moment you are asked to do it. You will be tired, the person asking will be someone you like or fear, and the reasons to go along will all be present in the room while the reasons not to are abstract.

So decide beforehand. This employee ethics framework is a structure for a short personal document, written in an evening, kept somewhere private, and reread when the moment comes. Five sections, each with the questions to answer and an example of what an answer looks like. The examples are hypothetical.

What to take away

Section one: which kind of situation is this

Most situations that feel like ethical problems are one of three things, and only one of them needs you to weigh anything.

Not your call. The decision belongs to someone else and you are being asked to carry it out. Your obligation is to make sure the decision-maker has what they need, including your objection, and then to decide whether carrying it out is something you can do. It is not to make the decision for them by quiet non-compliance.

Legally governed. Some conduct is regulated: what you may say about a colleague, what data you may access, what you may do with money, and what protections exist for someone who reports. In the United States, there is no single whistleblower law for every worker or report. Depending on the employer and issue, examples include section 806 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which protects certain employees and provides for retaliation complaints to the U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), and the Dodd-Frank Act's SEC whistleblower program, administered by the Securities and Exchange Commission's Office of the Whistleblower. Their coverage and procedures differ. If the situation is of this kind, find out promptly, from counsel or the organization's designated route, what applies. Do not assume an internal report preserves a right to report externally. Acting first and finding out later is how people who were right end up in trouble.

Genuinely yours. Nobody has decided, the law does not settle it, and what happens next depends on what you do. This is the kind the rest of the document is for.

Write: three recent situations, one of each kind, and how you told them apart. If you cannot find one of the third kind, you may be classifying things as not your call that are.

Section two: the cheapest reversible step

Before any step that costs something, there is one that costs almost nothing: a question, in writing, to the person who asked.

"Can you help me understand what this is for?", "Who else has seen this?", and "Is there a reason we would not do this the usual way?" These are not accusations but what a careful person asks. They do three things at once.

They give the other person a chance to explain something you misread, a chance to reconsider, and a record that you asked.

Write: the three questions you would use, in your own words, so that you are not composing them under pressure. And the rule: no expensive step before the cheap one, ever.

Example: a colleague asks you to backdate a document "because the system was down". The cheapest step is "Can you confirm the date it was actually signed, and I will note the system issue alongside it?" Most of the time that ends it. If it does not, you have learned something and lost nothing.

Section three: the ladder and its tradeoffs

Escalation is a ladder, and each rung has a cost. The mistake is to discover the cost on the rung. Write it down now.

Costs in the right column are typical, not universal. Yours depend on your organization and the protections that apply, a legal question. Fill in the column for your own situation. Knowing prices in advance makes the ladder usable.

In the UK, the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 is a key whistleblowing statute, and GOV.UK publishes a prescribed persons list for certain disclosures. The UK government's anti-corruption strategy update provides policy context, not a substitute for checking the Act and the conditions for making a protected disclosure. Protections and reporting routes differ by country and issue; get advice from counsel familiar with the relevant jurisdiction.

Write your own version of the table, with honest costs. Then set the rule: climb one rung at a time, only when the rung below gives no answer or a bad one.

Skipping rungs feels decisive and reads as reckless, while stopping because the next rung is expensive is a decision, so make it consciously, not by drifting.

Section four: what to keep

A contemporaneous note protects you more than anything else, and costs almost nothing to keep.

The note records dates, what was said, by whom, and what you did. Write it on the day, in your own words, and keep it somewhere personal.

It is not a copy of company documents, since taking those may breach your obligations and is unlawful in some places, whatever your reason. If you think you need documents rather than notes, ask your own counsel before taking anything.

Write: where you will keep the note, and a template line: date, who, what was said, what I did, what I asked. Then start keeping it the day something first feels wrong, not the day it becomes serious. By then you will be reconstructing, and reconstructions are worth less.

Section five: the line

This is the section most people leave blank, and the one the whole document exists for.

Write in plain words what you will not do, whoever asks, whatever cost, not a values statement but a short list of specific actions.

Falsify a record, conceal from a customer what they need to decide, tell a colleague a lie harming them, access what you have no business accessing. Your list will differ; keep it short, specific, yours.

Then write the other half: what you will do if asked to cross it. Not "refuse," which is a posture. Give the sequence: rung one, rung two, which rung you would climb to, and when you would leave instead of climbing further.

The pillar on employee ethics covers what leaving involves and what speaking up costs. This section is where you decide, in advance, which you would choose.

Example, for one line: I will not tell a customer that a fault is fixed when I know it is not. If asked, I will ask in writing what the customer should be told and why. Then I will object in writing and raise it with the manager above.

If unresolved, I will not make the statement and will accept what follows, up to and including leaving.

The same line continues: "I will not go outside the organization over this alone unless someone is at risk of real harm, in which case I will ask counsel first." That is a line with a route attached. A line without a route is a wish.

Using it

Reread it when something starts to feel wrong, which is earlier than when it becomes serious. Section one tells you what kind of situation you are in. Section two gives you the first step. Section three tells you the price of the next one. Section four tells you what to write down tonight. Section five tells you where you stop.

Writing it beforehand means that when the moment arrives, you decide nothing. You follow what you chose when you were calm and nobody was waiting for an answer.

The weighing method, where the situation is genuinely yours, is set out in ethical frameworks and, in shorter form, in an introduction to the standard lenses.

The shapes those situations tend to take are in ethical dilemmas.

What the organization owes you in return, in the form of a route that works and does not punish you for using it, is set out in codes of conduct. If yours does not provide that, the right-hand column of your table is longer than it should be, and that is worth knowing before you need the ladder.

Common questions

Should I show this document to anyone?

Not the whole thing. The three questions in section two are worth sharing with a trusted colleague, because they improve with use. The line in section five is yours.

What if my organization has no reporting route?

Then rung 4 of your ladder is missing and rung 5 is closer than it should be. Write that down honestly, and factor it into how long you intend to stay. What protections you have outside the organization is a legal question for counsel of your own.

Is keeping a personal note itself a risk?

A note in your own words, recording what you saw and did, kept privately, is ordinarily the safest thing on this page. Copying company documents is a different matter and may breach your obligations. If you are unsure which side of that line something is on, ask counsel before, not after.