The Moral Dilemmas of Young

Professionals
HBSWK Pub. Date: Jul 5, 2004
What influences the moral compasses of young professionals? Harvard
Graduate School of Education researchers discuss their new book on
ethical conflicts faced by generations at the start of their career ladder.
by Mallory Stark

Market pressures and the speed of modern-day business are placing severe
ethical demands on young professionals. Are they selling out to further their
careers, or doing the right thing by their moral compass?

The picture is complicated, and has been recently documented via the
Harvard Graduate School of Education's GoodWork Project. A recent book on
the research, Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas
at Work (Harvard University Press, 2004), was written by researchers Wendy
Fischman, Becca Solomon, Deborah Greenspan, and faculty member
Howard Gardner (renowned for his theory of multiple intelligences). The study
looked at on-the-job moral dilemmas faced by a hundred professionals
between the ages of fifteen and thirty-five in three professions: journalism,
science, and acting.

The results are unsettling. Often the young professionals know the right thing
to do, but instead cross that line to further their careers by bending the rules
or engaging in morally questionable behavior. They look for jobs with big
money instead of big satisfaction.

Employers need to consider these findings as they think about their own
corporate values and as they construct management development and
mentoring programs.

Authors Fischman, Solomon, Greenspan, and Gardner collaborated on this e-

mail interview.

Mallory Stark: Is this tension over the dual meaning of being a "good
worker"—that is, being skilled at a job as well as doing the job in an
ethical manner—inherent to the younger generation of workers?

A: The challenges to doing work that is at once excellent in quality and

socially responsible—"good work"—are salient for professionals across
stages and fields. Young people still developing the skills and integrating the
values of their professions, however, may be particularly vulnerable to this
tension.
 Many of the young participants in our study, for example, easily identified
what they felt was most responsible and "right," but felt that they were
excused or even compelled to compromise these morals in order to advance
in their careers at this early stage. Young journalists frequently cited
interviewing bereaved families as something they believed to be intrusive and
inappropriate. While some found ways to refuse, most complied with their
editors' demands explaining that, as they advanced in their careers, they
would have the luxury to avoid or reject such assignments without risking their
jobs.

At the same time, there is immense pressure on professionals from novices to

veterans in today's marketplace to meet bottom-line demands. Where
scientists in the past focused on contributing to knowledge or curing disease,
for example, today they may be searching for lucrative treatments to increase
a biotech's market share value.

This is not to say that financial concerns have not always had some role in
professions—scientists have always competed for grants, for example. But
the market pressures of today combined with the lightning speed advances in
technology are unprecedented. Young workers are developing in a different
cultural climate than their predecessors, and have the complex task of
learning to negotiate the often competing demands of excellence, ethics, and
earnings.

Q: Were mentors and role models an important force in the experiences

of the professionals in your study?

A: Interpersonal influences are undeniably crucial forces in any aspect of

development, including development within a profession. Ideally, young
people should choose their parents well, and it helps if they choose their
mentors well. Of course, they have more options in the latter category.

Young professionals need to be As might be expected, parents were most

reflective about the purposes of likely to be described as role models of
hard work and discipline among younger
their work and proactive about participants in our study, whether or not
the approaches they take. they worked in the same field that their
children pursued. Many of the participants also described important teachers
who guided them in learning at least the fundamentals of their craft. For the
most part, however, young professionals did not speak of close meaningful
mentor relationships in their professional training and workplace, especially as
compared to more veteran workers' discussions of mentors and paragons in
their own professional development.
As young people advanced in their professions, however, we found that the
function and importance of mentors and role models differed across
profession. Young professional journalists in particular lamented the lack of
mentors on the job, though those who had attended journalism school often
spoke admiringly of professors, and almost all the young journalists looked to
exemplary institutions (e.g., the New York Times) as standards.

While young actors looked to distant luminaries as models in their work, they
were more likely to depend upon themselves and to look to their immediate
theater community than to cite individual mentors.

In contrast, in the regimented career trajectory of science, close formal

mentorship was central throughout training. While this formal mentoring was
described positively by some, others spoke about challenging and even
competitive relationships with mentors.

Overall, we were concerned that very few participants in our study described
mentors who exemplified "good work."

Q: How did professional norms affect the ethical behaviors of the

professionals in your study?

A: Professional norms heavily influenced the ways in which our participants

approached their work. In many cases, the norms surrounding a profession
were shaped by financial considerations, such as increasing newspaper
circulation and securing grant monies. Young professionals repeatedly
expressed anxiety over demands to compromise their personal values in the
pursuit of profit. They were asked, for example, to sensationalize news
stories, to publish scientific results before all the data were collected, and to
portray characters in stereotypical ways. The participants in our study often
complied with such pressures, however, in order to secure or to advance their
places within the profession.

There were cases in each profession, however, where participants defied

such pressures and acted in accordance with their own belief systems. These
individuals acknowledged the financially-driven demands of their superiors as
well as the possible ramifications of noncompliance. Nonetheless, they relied
on their own moral compass in guiding their behaviors or, in some cases,
considered leaving the profession if the pressures against pursuing their work
in an ethical way became too great.

Q: What recommendations can you offer to young professionals who

would like to enhance their performance as "good workers"?
A: Generally speaking, young professionals need to be
reflective about the purposes of their work and proactive about
the approaches they take in their work in order to produce
"good work" and become "good workers."

It is imperative to think about the consequences of work not

only for yourself, but also for surrounding peers and Making
colleagues, and for the wider society. Young people need to Good:
ask themselves, "What are the implications of my work and How
what are the ramifications of the work-related decisions I Young
make?" Building in periodic reflection about the kind of work People
Cope with
you set out to do, the ways in which you go about doing it, and Moral
on the final product, will increase the likelihood of "good work." Dilemmas
at Work
Specifically, we describe three "levers" to good work which can
be used by young professionals as well as by the veteran
professionals who guide the work of younger professionals:

Mission: Define and articulate the mission of your particular profession and
whether the institution in which you work and the colleagues with whom you
work carry out work that is in accordance with this mission.

Model: Identify models of admirable workers who exemplify the kind of

worker you want to become. Ask yourself: What is this person's motives for
doing work? What kind of decisions does this person make during difficult
situations? How does this individual's work contribute to society? It might be
useful to think about paragons as well—individuals whom you may not know
personally (e.g., Edward R. Murrow, Albert Schweitzer, John Gardner).

Mirror: Reflect on the decisions you make and approaches you take by
asking yourself two questions: Am I proud of the kind of worker I am? Would I
want to live in a society in which every member of my profession carried out
work in the ways it is currently executed? Responding to these questions
regularly can keep professionals honest and may offer opportunities to correct
a misguided action or decision.

It is also important for young people who have career interests, but not a
particular job, to also consider the consequences their work has on others
and the impact that "good work," as well as compromised or bad work, has on
our society. Towards this end, we are currently in the process of developing a
curriculum for high school students to bridge the gap between research and
practice and to prepare young students for the kind of pressures and
challenges they will undoubtedly face in the workplace. This curriculum, A
Toolkit for Workers in Progress, aims to introduce the concept of "good work"
 so that they have a framework to use as they consider the kind of workers
they are now and the kinds of professionals they want to become.

Q: What were the biggest surprises that you encountered in your

research?

A: These were four areas:

Prevalence and impact of ethical dilemmas for young people. Almost all
the young professionals we interviewed dealt with some kind of ethical
dilemma in their work. These ethical dilemmas played out differently
depending on age, profession, workplace settings, personality, and available
support structures, but the tensions often caused individuals to act in ways
that conflicted with the values and intentions they espoused for their work.
Even though young professionals described values such as honesty, integrity,
and professional relationships as important to them, they were willing to
compromise these values in order to satisfy a professional demand, compete
with their peers for recognition, or gain rewards for their long hours and low
pay. Young professionals just starting out in their careers felt that there was
no choice—if they were going to stay in their jobs, or even get a job, they may
have to cheat just to "keep up" and "make it" in the field.

Justifications of unethical acts. Young professionals were upfront about the

unethical tactics they used at work to negotiate difficult situations. When we
talk about these unethical acts, people are always surprised that the
participants actually admitted to these kinds of behaviors (e.g., lying about
professional identity in order to get a story, fabricating data in a lab report).
The important finding here is that most young professionals did not feel badly
or ashamed about their unethical practices because in their minds, the ends
justify the means. As long as the unethical approach was in the service of
getting out an important story for society to read, publishing a vital finding in a
journal, or sending an essential message to the audience, in their eyes, it was
necessary and not "wrong."

Genetics has become a lucrative Lack of "deep" mentoring. Many young

field, and they wanted their professionals identified a lack of support
from—and even competition with—
piece of it. authority figures, including supervisors,
teachers, academic advisors, and directors. Lab supervisors and editors
pressure young professionals to publish their findings early and to get the
story quickly, using any means possible. Interestingly, Jayson Blair, who was
a subject in our study and did not show up twice for the interview, is an
example of a young journalist at the New York Times whose "mentors"
modeled superficial traits—glibness, speed, flash—rather than due diligence
and integrity. As a result, young professionals, like Blair, compromise their
own values and the kind of work they want to do in order to meet demands
without confrontation. Certainly, young actors would rarely confront a director
with a disagreement about a script's interpretation or with an interpersonal
issue with a fellow cast member. Of those young professionals who described
a close mentor relationship, some described ways in which their mentors
advised them to take an unethical route for the reward and recognition they
would receive. Some of these mentors admitted that in order to "make it,"
young professionals will have to learn how to navigate the "real world" of their
profession.

Effect of market forces. It is especially hard to do "good work" during times

when the market is the bottom line. We see the changes everywhere:
commercialization on television, in newspapers, and on Broadway. What
matters is what sells.

Particularly dangerous for young people, we've noticed, is that market forces
not only influence the ways in which young people think about and carry out
their work, but also in what career they choose to pursue. Actors were
concerned about the decreasing theater venues (and the "Disneyfication" of
live theater) and some of the journalists contemplated leaving the profession
altogether.

Additionally, of the twelve promising high school scientists we interviewed,

who won international science competitions and were working in university
laboratories, none expressed interest in continuing in academic research.
Instead, they all wanted to pursue the more profitable fields of biotechnology,
medicine, or pharmaceuticals. These young students had seen the life of
post-doctoral students—the incredible long hours and low pay—and they did
not want it. Genetics has become a lucrative field, and they wanted their piece
of it.

Mallory Stark is a career information librarian at Baker Library.