Professional integrity

Original photo by Neil Huxtable. Crop and b/w conversion by me. Original here

A friend of a friend was telling me about something that happened to her at her workplace. She is a very forthright person, Katherine Hepburn style, and made no attempt to disguise her outrage. It seems that she was asked to sit on a panel where they would be selecting candidates to put forward for promotion. One of the candidates, for unknown reasons, perhaps in view of the fact she is in a managerial position, was given the opportunity to view and comment on all the applications. The friend discovered that this woman had also applied for promotion in the same round, on top of the one she had just received - fast tracking her own career progress. It seems that the only application this candidate did not comment upon was her own and this was seen as acceptable by everyone involved. My friend was disgusted and resigned from the panel. "I want nothing to do with this flawed procedure"she said "They may all be happy and see nothing wrong with it, but I do. For me to distance myself from it is a matter of professional integrity".
I should add that this friend works in the public sector, where procedures and such like are regarded as important. In the private sector things may well be different, yet an appearance of fairness is still maintained, in terms of recruitment, promotion and so on.
I would like to understand better this notion of professional integrity. Where do you draw the line? What is and what is not admissible?
The behind closed doors decisions are always going to be there, the manipulation, the flaunting of regulations. For many people career advancement will always involve taking part in those games, compromises. It is rare to find people that have the courage of their own convictions and who will not bend their will and they are often the ones who find themselves isolated, because they refuse to be part of a clique.

Photographer: Elina Pasok. Test for Dove

"It's the principle of the thing" said my friend. "I am sensitive to such issues, I come from the land where people are asked to pay a pizzo in exchange for protection, but we have learnt to say no".  She thought that if one candidate had the opportunity to give feedback on the others, they should all be given that same chance.
Integrity is difficult to define. A long article in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy opens with the following:
"Integrity is one of the most important and oft-cited of virtue terms. It is also perhaps the most puzzling. For example, while it is sometimes used virtually synonymously with ‘moral,’ we also at times distinguish acting morally from acting with integrity. Persons of integrity may in fact act immorally—though they would usually not know they are acting immorally.
Thus one may acknowledge a person to have integrity even though that person may hold what one thinks are importantly mistaken moral views". Perhaps my friend was too suspicious and saw foul play where there was none. Still, I have to admire her for having the guts to walk out. She demonstrated conviction and integrity with her views of how a professional should behave.




(Photos modelled by Alex B)