Running head: DILEMMA AT WORK
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Dilemma at Work
Miguel Molina
Park University
DILEMMA AT WORK
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Abstract
Recently I had to deal with a big dilemma at work, the hard part was my ethics as a an IT
professional the first rule that I need to have always in mind is “all material, documents or
information needs to be confidential” but I this particular case I had to violate or maybe just bend
the rule one time. Maybe I did broke that rule or maybe not but this will depend on the point of
view of somebody else.
But we need to keep always in mind, the bad use of information is a computer crime and any
unethical decision can take us straight to jail.
DILEMMA AT WORK
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Dilemma at Work
To talk about all this dilemma let me start with talk about ethics, some ethical choices are
difficult to understand as ethical choices. When I barely started working in Information
Technology one of my instructors taught me and showed me examples from his own experience,
he started with the choices he made, how do I supposed to consider alternatives and he says that
we don’t always get things right. But I remember his words, People want and trust in computer
experts to be recognized as professionals; to achieve this, we need to behave as professionals. We
have to be professional and we need to understand what that means and be able to handle and
manage this huge responsibility.
The beginning of the big Dilemma
Let me start with how all this started, it was a Thursday morning of December and just arrived to
the office and one of my coworkers was already there and he was working in his computer, that’s
what I thought, I just passed by his desk to get some coffee and might as well have a short
conversation, but, when say hi to him I notice that he was reading some e-mail from the IT
Director. He was surprised that I looked to his screen and then he started to talk to me about the
e-mails that he was reading and why he was so into those conversations. Everybody knows that
IT guys are able to read everything, but we need to be ethic and reliable all the times. But in this
case was something really bad for our manager, he was more than a manager; that guy was a
leader not a boss but he was not good enough for the director. The email was between the
president of the company and the director and they were planning to set the manager with a
project with a lot of money involved, I was not wanted to be involved in this situation but this
guy told me everything, so I was involved a hundred percent now, and the dilemma versus the
ethics come into play.
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What to do?
Now that I was completely involved on this problem I kept thinking about my manager, he is a
family guy, wife and kids; he was a great boss, amazing troubleshooting skills, he knows a lot of
Information Technology Infrastructure, like I said; he was more than a manager, he was a friend,
we worked together to achieve all the goals in the department and to me, it was not fair to the
director to treat him like that just because I was not part of his crew.
In the other side of the coin, I needed to be professional and let the director know about this
email problem, as a reliable employee my obligation was with the company. I had the worst
week of my life; my world was crazy because I could not look into my manager eyes or even the
director on the meetings, I felt really bad because it was almost Christmas and I could not
imagine my manager little kids with a job less dad.
I consider myself as a faithful person and this guy gave me the opportunity to work in that
company, chance to grow up as a IT really fast and the most important of all; he opened the door
of his house to me and my daughter and that guy and his wife treat us like family so I can not
backstab him.
My coworker, the one that put me in this dilemma told me forget about that. Like I said that
manager helped my daughter and me when I was in a hard time of my life. So my moral
obligation was with him and I did it. I talked to him about this email.
He was in shock because he could not believe what I was telling him, I print that email and
showed to him, I felt so bad when I looked his eyes because he was not expecting this at all.
He thank me but he told the problem that I had on my back, because I was not supposed to read
those emails, now I supposed to be ready for the consequences.
DILEMMA AT WORK
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I have my little girl that I need to take care so I’m always ready for bad things and this time will
not be the exception.
The manager started to work double the hard that he was working before just to get his back
covered, me and the other coworker helped him with the goals; we did it as a team and we
achieve beyond the quarter goals required.
He had a meeting with upper management at the end of the quarter and he showed the income of
the projects assigned, the president of the company and the director could not believe it. They
congratulate all of us because our hard work. But we all knew that we did it to save the manager
and he was so grateful about it. To me, the priceless moment was when his wife called me almost
crying to thank me because what I did, she told that I went too far just for her family; that I put
my job on the line just for them and she thank me a lot of times.
My conscience made me do something unprofessional, I feel bad because I violate the most
important rule in technology, but my instructor, my mentor told me: “we don’t always get things
right”, and this is a good example.
After all I went to the director and we had a long conversation about this, I told him about the
email that I read and my approach to the manager, I was expecting the worst because you never
will be good on both sides. I knew it, he told me. I know you guys are like family and it was a
matter of time that this will happen. I feel bad because you are not reliable at work but at the
same time you are person of value and that is the most important thing for me.
He talk to me about his military days and how important was to him to have somebody to rely
and trust.
He ordered my manager to remove me all access to manage company email, that was my
punishment and it could be worst but after all I did the right thing in both sides.
DILEMMA AT WORK
I learned my lesson the hard way or maybe I needed this as experience, things happen because
we need to learn, maybe I was not ready to handle situations like this and this was an easy one.
Now I’m trying to be always professional and always get advice from my old manager and my
old director, for some reason I keep communication with both guys, the manager has been my
friend for about 8 years now and the director has been my mentor almost 5 years now.
Conclusion
No bad consequences just a great experience and most important, now I feel ready for more
challenge with my feet on the ground but at the end of the day I keep remember those words
from my first mentor “People want and trust in computer experts to be recognized as
professionals; to achieve this, we need to behave as professionals”.
So for now I will be always professional, never again because next time I’m sure there will be
bad consequences.
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