Strong Ethics Enhance the PR Profession

PRSA provides educational opportunities to explore ethics in public relations year-round. PRSA recognizes Ethics Month each September to bring increased attention to the communications profession’s core foundation. Visit this link for additional programming and ethics resources.

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Several years ago, I was invited to speak at a regional conference. I pitched a session on the intersection of crisis and ethics because, as I have found throughout my career that the two are often intertwined. The conference planner accepted my session but asked me to remove the word ethics from the title because he said, “Nobody goes to sessions about ethics.”

The comment surprised me; though, perhaps it shouldn’t. Whenever I have stopped a client or boss from taking an action because it was unethical, the response has been either confusion or indignation. That tells me that ethics breaches either happen out of ignorance or habit, and so it’s possible that PR people don’t go to ethics sessions because they don’t think they need to. They are unaware of the ethics breaches that are happening around them because they have either never been taught, or worse, it’s just how workplaces are.

In one example from my past, a client was planning a large and expensive infrastructure project for a community. The elected leader had attached a gag order to the project, insisting that we not discuss it in the community.

Realizing how impossible it would be for us to generate public support for the project if we couldn’t talk about it, my boss suggested we hire a front company or pay some well-respected community members to tout the benefits of the project.

Another large and expensive infrastructure project I was working on in another state would be increasing residential water bills by 50%. The client wanted me to obtain community support for the project without divulging this key piece of information.

In both cases, the PRSA Ethics Code Provision at play was:

• Disclosure – the notion of open and transparent communication, sharing key information for informed decision-making.

Other provisions of the PRSA Code include:

• Free Flow of Information, which is about honesty and accuracy; correcting misunderstandings, providing unprejudiced information (no quid pro quo).
• Competition, which is about enabling a fair process in business dealings and ensuring everyone has an equitable opportunity to compete. It shows up a lot in the hiring process and proposal work.
• Safeguarding Confidences, which is about protecting confidential and private information.
• Conflicts of Interest, which is about avoiding or stopping situations that put one’s personal or professional interests in conflict with society’s interests.
• Enhancing the Profession, which is about protecting and enhancing the profession of public relations; adhering to the code; and decline to work with organizations that compel actions that are contrary to the code.

Following the Code can mean making some tough choices about your employment. I ended up resigning the client who wanted me to keep project costs a secret from the public. They had also on occasion directed me to stonewall a reporter, and not be truthful in my conversation with her. It was incredibly uncomfortable and messy. I resigned the client not long after that.

I also resigned the client who wanted to set up the front company in the first example I mentioned. The ethics breaches had continued with them, such as falsifying financial records to obtain a higher valuation for investors. They also failed to follow their own discrimination and harassment policies.

If you are not convinced this is just how workplaces are, then check out The Global Business Ethics Survey® (GBES®). This survey has been conducted annually by the Ethics and Compliance Initiative (ECI) since 1994. It reaches more than 75,000 employees in more than 40 countries, asking them about their experiences and perceptions around ethics in the workplace.

The 2023 survey results are in and say that misconduct in the workplace is at an all-time high. Another finding of the 2023 study was that employees continue to face exceptionally high levels of pressure to compromise workplace  standards or the law. One of the more disappointing findings was that only about 10% of employees globally say that they work in  a strong ethical workplace culture.

So, what can we do as practitioners?

1. Study the PRSA Code of Ethics. — know what to look for. Your hint is, if something doesn’t seem fair or feel right, it probably isn’t. But the bottom line is: You can’t fix a problem until you know there is one.
2. Consult your network. In the instance, I described where my client wanted me to stonewall a reporter, I had a massive stomachache. What if I was overreacting? I reached out to my Chapter’s IPRA group and asked them if my Spidey sense was right — that I should remove myself from the situation and they all agreed. Having that reassurance gave me the confidence to tell my client what we were doing was wrong and I wouldn’t be a part of it.
3. Ask lots of questions. When your client or company is about to take action that feels wrong, check the Code first then ask questions like:

• Does this harm anyone?
• Is this fair to everyone?
• Does this help my client or company at the expense of someone else?
• Are we hiding anything?
• Are we being forthcoming and transparent?

4. Be willing to leave. This is a tough one, I know, because most of us need to work. But if you can leave, as I did a few times in my career, then it can make a world of difference for your mental health. (And it offers a strong signal to others about the importance of ethics.)

If you know what to look for, then you’ll probably experience ethics breaches more often and be able to stop them. I recently went after some work through a competitive process where my firm had submitted an RFP and was shortlisted to the interview stage. The interview was going great, and then, toward the end of it, the person representing the City said, “By the way, I am not a city employee. I am a consultant that works for the city.”

As it turned out, she was a direct competitor of mine. Was she unlawful? No. Was it unethical? I think so. The right thing would’ve been for the city to disclose, in the RFP, that they were using a consultant (and name the firm) to help them review and select proposals. Then I would’ve had the knowledge to decide whether I wanted to share proprietary information with a direct competitor.

Learn the Code, reach out to your network in PRSA, ask lots of questions and consider leaving if necessary. Having a strong ethical culture at work isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s an essential way we enhance not just the public relations profession, but all professions.

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Samantha Villegas, APR, Fellow PRSA, is the ethics officer for PRSA’s National Capital Chapter and a principal consultant with Raftelis, a national management consulting firm that serves utilities and local government.

[Illustration source: inna]