This week on Ethical Voices, Carolyn Smith Casertano, MA, APR, Fellow PRSA, professor of practice in the Department of Communication at the University of Arizona, discusses several important ethics issues including;
- How to effectively address management decisions that conflict with your values
- What to do when a client tries to hire your staff
Why don’t you tell us more about yourself and your career?
Like many of my friends in the public relations industry, I graduated with a degree in journalism and worked as a journalist for a short time before pivoting over to PR. I worked in the industry for over 20 years working for a large company, a small company, for myself, for an agency, and then I had a really wonderful and surprising opportunity to move into academia. I had just gotten a master’s degree. I have now been working as an academic for the last five years, and it’s fun, challenging, and exciting and I absolutely love working with students and I still do some consulting on the side, so it’s pretty great.
You’ve had a pretty broad career. What is the most difficult ethical challenge you ever confronted at work?
It’s hard to pinpoint just one, but I would say one of the largest issues I have had to deal with involved a company that I used to work – a very large company with thousands of employees and we had a partnership with a somewhat controversial company. Once the word got out that this partnership had been signed, there was a lot of backlash from internal employees across the country.
The way that came about, the way that it unfolded felt wrong to me. It felt like we had not behaved in an ethical way, and it bothered me for months afterwards because even the partnership went through that sort of lasting bitterness with some of our employees. Some employees actually left the organization – really talented people.
It was sad. It was frustrating. I felt like it should have been handled differently.
Let’s dig into that. You hear your company’s forming this partnership and you think it’s obviously something that doesn’t align with your values. How do you go about raising the issues with senior management?
I tell my students you get in these circumstances when you go into the workforce and there are things you can control and there are things that are absolutely out of your control.
Where we can have the most value is when we are really respected at the top of an organization, by providing that really good strategic counsel. One of the things missing in this particular partnership deal is that there wasn’t that head communications person who was able to get their voice heard and understood. For somebody to say, wait a second, let’s hit the pause button.
Because if we have any idea that perhaps our internal stakeholders are unhappy about this maybe we need to do something about it. It doesn’t necessarily mean the partnership doesn’t go forward, but maybe you involve them. You have some town halls, some listening sessions, and really find out what are the key issues here and how we can address them and make them feel like they’re concerns are validated, that they’ve been heard and listened to. That would’ve been the respectful way to handle it.
I teach a crisis communication class and we talk about what happens when you leave your internal audiences behind. In this particular case, it was a prime example where, if only we had done something different, if only we had actually, hit that pause button and addressed the concerns at the table…
They didn’t, in this case, things blew up. You had a bunch of angry employees, some of them left. What are the next steps when you realize that you’ve stepped in it and your internal stakeholders are not happy? How do you mitigate the damage?
It provides a powerful learning lesson.
In this case, some people on the board of directors suddenly realized like, wait a second. Perhaps we moved too quickly on this. The learnings there were next time something like this comes up, let’s really do our due process. Let’s really unpack what this is going to mean.
Who is going to have a stake in this decision-making process? Who’s going to be impacted by this decision? How do we address it in an ethical way so that people don’t feel they’ve been left behind? People feel like we’ve included them, like there’s been, fairness with all internal stakeholder groups. Because those internal employees, they are your ambassadors. They are the ones who become adversely affected by top line decisions, by leadership that you know, they have to live with it and they have to come back to work the next day and be okay with it.
Did the organization maintain its partnership?
They did for a time, and then the partnership ended. I think there was a bit of a sigh of relief. It was painful during the first few months of the partnership. Then the learnings came out and now hopefully the organization is better for it.
One of the things that Ethisphere says a lot, and I quote it quite a bit, is that ethical companies aren’t perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. Ethical companies, when they make them, they own it, and they fix it.
Did this organization, when they realized how they had offended their employees, did they make right and take a look at the stakeholders and listen to them and hear their concerns? Or do they just say, we lost certain number of employees but it will bring us a lot of revenue.
I think it’s a combination. Particularly for some companies, the power of the almighty dollar creates this atmosphere where it doesn’t matter who gets left behind, we’re going forward with this because we want the dollars, we want that revenue. And to some degree, all it takes in some cases is one or two leaders who have a seat at the right table.
They have the influence to persuade everybody else to go along with it. Then it’s just a domino effect where it’s…let’s go ahead and sign the paperwork and see what happens. If people are unhappy about it, too bad.
One of the things I’m seeing change a lot over the past few years with agencies is it used to be, if it’s a client you don’t agree with staff would say, I don’t want to work on it. Now it’s, our agency shouldn’t even represent this client.
You’re starting to see a lot more employee activism in helping organizations choose the clients that align with their social beliefs.
Absolutely. I think that’s one great thing about this next generation of upcoming PR practitioners is they’ve really got a strong ethical foundation and they want to work for companies who are going to do right.
They’re going to do the things that they feel excited about, they’re going take on clients that they’re passionate about working with and have good, corporate social responsibility. They’re not afraid to say, I’m not okay with this, and I don’t want to work for this client.
I don’t want to do this thing. I really applaud them. I think about times back in my career where I felt too scared to speak up. In some cases I regret it. I want this next generation to feel empowered. They can make good decisions for themselves.
Ray Kocher, who used to be the head over Ketchum, says his generation (the boomers) wanted to change the world. But it’s Gen Z that’s actually changing the world right now. That is a really powerful statement.
Are there other ethics issues you wanted to highlight?
There’s been some issues that have come up with how we’ve dealt with clients. I use this one for my students. I worked for an agency and we took on a client who I was really excited about doing the work for them.
I did some good work and it caught the attention of a higher up and they tried really hard to hire me away from this agency. It was a conflict of interest. It was competition, it was loyalty. All of these things that, you know we teach about and we touch on and it really created this very difficult scenario because I really loved doing the work and I really didn’t want to be in this awkward position where it was like, I can’t go and work for you because I’ve already agreed I’m working with this agency. They represent you. I can’t move forward with this.
Unfortunately, they pulled away from the agency regardless. I think they realized they wanted somebody in-house full-time. But again, it was a really good lesson for me to be able to speak up to voice the concern and practice that kind of ethical muscle.
But at the time it was happening, it was very uncomfortable. That’s where we train ourselves. Hey, I’ve been through some of these situations before. I can handle it. I can do this, I can act ethically and I can live up to my values and my own integrity about the decisions that I make.
And that’s a great place to be in your career.
As I tell my students and others, we’re both PRSA Fellows. The reason we seem wicked smart is not just because we are smart, it is because we’ve seen the screw-ups for 20, 25, 30 years of people making unethical decisions – and we’ve learned from them all. That’s why I talk about training your ethical mind and share these examples so people will have a reference to go back on. So, it’s not oh my God, this is the first time this has happened,
When you talk about your example, I think a lot of agencies deal with it. They write it into their contracts that clients can’t poach their staff, or if they do, they usually will negotiate it in some way that you can hire them away, but then you can’t fire us for two years, which is a win-win in some cases for both parties.
Absolutely. I love your model of training your ethical mind, because we’re all going to make mistakes. We’re all going do things where you go back and think, would I make that same decision again. Maybe the answer’s no, I would’ve done something differently.
And that’s okay. It’s okay to make some mistakes, but we need to learn from it. It’s like training. I think of it almost like a muscle. You’ve gotta train it. And practice. I think it was John Stewart who said something about, values aren’t just something that can come and go. Because if they are, then it’s a hobby. Values are something consistent. You have to try your best and act in a way that you are going to feel proud of yourself. You’re going to go to bed at night and feel good about the work that you’ve done and the people with whom you have worked.
Beyond your own experience, what are you seeing as some of the key ethics challenges of today and tomorrow?
Oh gosh. I think there are a lot around honesty, transparency and artificial intelligence.
It’s here. I know that we’ve all got our different ways of using it, not using it, we’re creating policies and protocols. We need to address some of the myths and disinformation first. That’s getting lost in the AI discussion. Powerful people are saying things that are not substantiated. They haven’t been validated, they’re not going through a fact checking process, and they’re being shared, and they’re being listened to valued and repeated. I think we really have to do better at stopping it, at preventing it at, teaching people in education.
How do we get away from this? How do we get away from. This constant cycle where things get shared and they’re just not factual, they’re just not truth. We do ourselves and our constituents a huge disservice when we’re not truthful and when we allow people in positions of power to share things that we know are not true.
I feel really strongly that we have to get our arms around that better. It dovetails with the discussion about AI because there’s disclosure and conflict of information. All this stuff we have to really think about.
What am I sending? What am I posting? What am I tweeting? What are, what am I sharing? And has it gone through some sort of process where I know that what I’m saying is the truth. It’s not up for debate because facts are facts. How we’ve had this distorted situation is just beyond me.
It’s a little bit baffling, but I think we have to really help each other stay on point. We’ve got to do better with our employees, constituencies, students, and everybody to make sure that we’re practicing an ethical mindset and not allowing for this spread of mis- and disinformation.
It’s almost like we’ve diluted the sensibility that, wait a second, this is not okay, this is not acceptable. And when one organization is doing it, why shouldn’t the other organization, they’re getting away with it, nobody’s calling them on it. Then, it’s going to happen here and other places.
It’s really problematic and it’s a serious issue and it’s doing real harm.
I agree. And it’s not new. AI is the electricity that’s amplifying it, but I can remember back in the mid-90s, when I was starting in tech PR all the competitors were inflating their claims, so we were under pressure to inflate our claims too. You’ll see a lot of times people will rationalize, if everybody else is cheating, why am I not cheating?
Absolutely. And I think this has larger implications for society as a whole.
We think about who we are in the public relations industry and the role we play in being that conscience and saying this is not okay. We can’t share this information. I used to follow this blogger who I thought was fantastic, they had thousands of followers and then suddenly they started, posting some of this information and I was like, wait a second.
It gave me that pause where it’s not true. Now I feel their reputation and integrity are compromised and now I’m not going to follow them. Sure enough, they lost lots of followers because guess what?
The truth came out. The truth came out and it was devastating for this particular blogger. You can’t go back and rewrite history, but can you do better the next time?
That’s a great piece of advice. Speaking of advice, what’s the best piece of ethical advice you ever received?
It goes back to, maybe, when I was in one of my journalism classes and one of my professors said, “When you know better, do better.” I think about that from time to time because, our parents used to say to us when we were little…you know better than that
Why did you do that terrible thing? It really makes me think…I know better than to represent a client or work for a company or an organization that does not align with my values and my ethics.
What I want to do and what I try to tell my students is to get to that place in your life, in your career, where you can distance yourself, you can move away, and even not work for people who have values and ethics that are totally contrary to what you, yourself believe in.
A great case that I sometimes think of is a colleague of mine who has an agency in the Northeast and she worked with a very large tobacco company for years and years. A very lucrative contract.
Yet, at some point in her career, she became a mom. She said, I woke up one day and realized. I could not in good faith keep doing the work that I was doing because I knew some of the tactics I was utilizing. They’re doing practices that I didn’t agree with.
As a mom it went against her principles, and she had to part ways. We are faced with those sometimes very specific situations where it’s a choice to make.
Then you have to ask yourself, do you have the courage to act upon that? Do you have the courage to say, you know what, I’m going to speak up, I’m going to say something, or I’m going to cut the chord and go in a different way because I just can’t agree with this decision.
That’s why Michael Smart told me the best advice he received was to have the freedom fund.
Because a lot of times you’ll see an ethical compromise and think- Oh my God, if I don’t go along, I’m going to lose my job. How do I pay for my mortgage? How do I pay for my apartment? Whatever it is, it’s easier said than done. You must realize that in the short term, there may be pain, but long term it will benefit you if you follow your ethical guidelines.
Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you wanted to highlight?
I think that all of us, whether you’re new to the PR industry or you’re a PRSA Fellow, we all have a role in this. We all have a part in helping shape the society that we want to live in and work in, we’ve must be able to talk about these issues and do so in a way that is not divisive because I think we’re all trying and have the same sort of intention that we want to raise, the next generation of ethical PR practitioners and make sure that we’re keeping our companies and leaders in check
Even if they’re not listening to our council, we can have peace with ourselves because we’re acting ethically, and we are in places where our ethical council is being listened to. That is how we are going to make a positive impact.
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