Three experiences across three decades taught me that loyalty to an employer should never require compromising personal integrity.
Over the course of my career, I have been asked to do many things I disagreed with. That is part of working for an organization. You do not always agree with management, and you do not always get your way.
But there is a difference between disagreeing with a decision and being asked to do something you believe is dishonest.
Three times in my career, that distinction cost me my job.
The first was in 1989. I was working for a technology company when management wanted us to tell customers that our profit margins were smaller than they actually were.
I had no problem declining to disclose the company’s margins. That was confidential business information, and customers were not necessarily entitled to it. But if a customer asked me directly, I had two acceptable choices: decline to answer or tell the truth.
Making up an answer was not one of them.
I did not spend much time debating what to do. I simply continued doing my job honestly, despite the company’s guidelines. Seven of us ultimately lost our jobs in circumstances involving our Christian convictions about honesty.
The second incident occurred in 2000 while I was working for a consulting company.
A regional vice president wanted me to tell a prospective customer that I had experience with a particular database technology. There was only one problem: I had never worked with it. In fact, I had never even heard of it.
I was perfectly willing to learn the technology. Throughout my career, I have had to learn new systems, tools, and approaches. That is part of working in technology.
But learning something new and claiming experience you do not have are two very different things.
I refused to misrepresent my qualifications and was fired for being disloyal.
This time, the consequences were more personal. The regional vice president who fired me was also a friend. I was leaving behind people with whom I had worked and developed friendships over many years. Some of those friendships have continued for more than twenty-five years.
It was a difficult departure, not because I was uncertain about telling the truth, but because of the relationships involved.
It is also worth making a distinction. This was the decision of an individual leader, not something I would attribute to the consulting company as a whole.
The third incident occurred in 2018.
By then, I had spent decades working in technology, including management and leadership roles. One of the responsibilities of a manager is evaluating the performance of the people who report to him.
The CIO began pressuring me to give one of my direct reports a negative performance review.
The problem was that the employee had done nothing to deserve one. His work had consistently been very good, and I had no legitimate basis for giving him a poor evaluation.
The pressure continued until I finally told the CIO that I could not, in good conscience, give the man a bad review.
The employee was fired. A short time later, I was fired as well.
By that point in my career, I had already experienced the consequences of refusing to compromise my integrity. I knew that standing my ground could cost me my job.
There was no hesitation.
I cannot speak to every consideration behind those decisions. I can only speak to what I was asked to do and why I refused.
Looking back, these three situations involved different responsibilities.
In the first, it was honesty toward customers. In the second, it was honesty about my own capabilities. In the third, it was honesty toward someone who had been entrusted to my leadership.
But the underlying question was the same.
What does loyalty require of us?
I believe employees owe their employers loyalty. When we accept a position, we take on responsibilities to the organization, its customers, its leadership, and the people with whom we work.
We should protect confidential information, support legitimate business decisions, and do our work to the best of our abilities.
But loyalty is not blind obedience.
A manager who asks an employee to deceive a customer is not protecting the company. A consulting leader who misrepresents someone’s qualifications is creating expectations that may never be met. And an executive who pressures a manager to give an undeserved negative review is undermining the trust on which effective leadership depends.
In each case, the request may have appeared to serve an immediate business objective. But the long-term cost of dishonesty can be far greater than whatever short-term advantage it provides.
My Christian faith has always shaped how I approach these decisions. I do not claim to have handled every situation in my career perfectly. Far from it. But there are some lines I have tried not to cross, and knowingly telling a lie is one of them.
There is another part of these stories worth mentioning.
After each termination, I eventually found a better job.
That is something I am grateful for, but it was never guaranteed. When I made those decisions, I did not know what opportunity would come next, how long I might be unemployed, or what the financial consequences would be.
Over the years, I have come to believe that loyalty and integrity should reinforce one another, not compete with one another.
Sometimes the most loyal thing you can do for an organization is respectfully refuse to do something that would compromise its integrity.
And sometimes that refusal comes at a personal cost.
I have never regretted telling the truth. I would have regretted lying.
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