By Art Weiss
art_weiss@tamko.com
“Rules are Rules!”; “I don’t care what your excuse is, the rules are there for a reason.”; “No exceptions.”; Worse yet, “Because I said so!” Have you ever found yourself uttering these words, or something similar?
From time to time it may happen. Employees try to rationalize or justify their deviance from one of our organizations’ rules or policies. Compliance is there to stop them. Is that our job? Are we cops?, Internal Affairs? While we may be responsible for ensuring that our organizations have rules and policies in place to govern conduct and prevent violations of law, we also need to be human beings; our employees are.
Back to the lady. As the crew on her flight was doing its cabin check prior to take off, and after telling passengers to turn off their cell phones, or put them into airplane mode, the lady received a text from her husband. He was apologizing for what he was about to do. He was about to commit suicide. The lady, desperate to communicate with him, texted ‘no’ and tried to call him. The flight attendants, citing FAA rules, stopped her. The lady begged but it was no use. She spent the entire two hour flight sobbing. As soon as she landed, she called the police. It was too late. Her husband had killed himself.
When I conduct training at my organization, I blast rationalizations and justifications pretty hard. I don’t believe in “Everybody does it,” “nobody will care,” or “no harm no foul.” Rules are rules, right? But we’re human too.
[bctt tweet=”Rules are rules, right? But we’re human too. @SCCE” via=”no”]
This is yet another real-life example illustrating the need for a strong ethical component within every compliance program to ensure rules are balanced with reality.
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