How to Deal with Unethical Client Behavior

What are some of yourtechniques for working through a situation where you have an existing clientthat may be doing something that is what you consider morally wrong orunethical?

From a client behavior standpoint, there’s macro client behaviorand micro client behavior. Macro client behavior is how a company operatestoday. If they’re conducting business in a manner we don’t agree with or ishugely out of alignment with our values, we need to be the strategic advisorswe claim to be and speak up. If they follow that advice, okay. If they disagree,it might result in a resignation. We can’t help an organization be understood,believed and appreciated if we ourselves don’t believe and appreciate whatthey’re doing.

It’s rare for us to have a client be out-and-out unethical. Ican remember one instance, way back in my career, where I was sitting in frontof a reporter with the executive of a startup technology company. The executivewas speaking to the reporter and I suddenly thought, “Wait a minute. That’s notactually true.” He was literally lying – over-inflating his experience, hiscustomer base, and his financial backers – and I had NO IDEA before theinterview that he would do that. Afterward, with some guidance from my boss, Icalled the reporter, outlined the situation and apologized. Then I got to firethe client, which was a completely new experience for me.

Macro behavior, to me, is easy. Where it gets a bit moredifficult is on the micro behavior level. When you have, for instance, a clientcontact whose general ethics are intact, but their manner and approach toward yourstaff are really negative. Say it’s a huge client and your team is bustingtheir butts doing great work, but the client contact is borderline abusive tothe team.  Obviously, you want to try toresolve the issue with that person and that person’s supervisor because it’s reallydamaging to the team’s morale. Ideally you could resign the client andalleviate the pressure on the staff, but at the same time, because it is alarge client, you put your organization and jobs at risk.

So, which do you choose? Do you want the benefit of being rid ofan awful client contact, or do you risk people losing their jobs? That’s anethical dilemma. I think the key is to have a dialogue with the people who areinvolved, talk through it and determine other ways to work around it. Sometimesyou’re able to resolve it. Other times, it becomes unsustainable and you haveto make the hard decision to either resign or tough it out and hope the teamcan outlast the bad client contact.

Who do you get involved inthat discussion? How do you work through that?

That’s a good question. It depends on the type of behavioralissue. If it’s an issue that involves sexual harassment, discrimination oranything of that nature, it’s immediately going to HR and accelerated. We’regoing to address that as quickly as possible because we have a zero-tolerance policy.

Other behavioral issues can be more insidious – disrespect canbuild over time with snide comments, constant sniping, lack of appreciation orname calling. This situation is tougher because you have to deal with it, butyou also need to ask: Was this a client having a bad day? Is this a clientcontact that’s had some difficult times? Then you need to figure out how to addressit. Obviously, the best way to do that is to be brave, go back to your valuesand initiate a dialogue with that client contact. Start with, “Hey, the wayyou’re approaching this is not getting the best results from the team.” If thatresolves it, great. If not, you may have to escalate it.

Let’s get to the final point you brought up in terms of ethical challenges you face – employee and partner behavior.

A super rare circumstance, but while it’s rare, HR has to be involved.You have to make sure you follow all due process for grievances, gatherinformation, evaluate the severity of the issue, and determine whether thecorrective action is “don’t do it again” or whether it’s a terminable offense.We’ve had very few of those, but they have come up on occasion.

Some situations aren’t necessarily ethical dilemmas as much as theyare a breach of ethics by an employee. It could be something like plagiarism orcopying and pasting from some public domain source and using it as your own.Those kinds of things obviously must be dealt with. I can happily say that theyare very, very rare at our firm – I’m not even sure I can come up with oneexample. 

If it’s a partner, you have to ask the right questions. You have to find out what happened and give that partner an opportunity to explain themselves. As far as I’m concerned, your partner’s problems are your problems, so you’ve got to resolve it.

This post is adapted from the Ethical Voices podcast interview with Padilla president Matt Kucharski.