The right wrong

The issue of ethics in corporate settings is slippery. How does one define ethics? The Bible says: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Peter Drucker, a management guru, proffers: "Business ethics might well be called 'ethical chic' rather than ethics - and indeed might be considered more a media event than philosophy or morals."

Our understanding of ethics is mostly black and white. Stealing is bad. Corporate fraud must be shunned in all respects. Red tape and nepotism harm companies and societies. These are banner protestations that most of us have encountered during cozy HR sessions at our companies.

But the art of "smart working", a term that has gained much cachet in corporate circles, involves bending the rules and getting things done. My flatmate Ravi, who works for a consultancy, recently handled a project that called on him to prepare a detailed study of the telecom sector in India. Since this was for a new client, Ravi had to draw up a road map of possible barriers to entry as well as any policy black holes.

Ravi had so far worked on projects in other sectors and was frankly clueless on telecom. His secondary research online set him up for a conversation that would make him look like the expert in the room. But he was doomed if he imagined it was enough for him to start suggesting a course of action to a company that was paying him big bucks for precisely such advice.

Posing as a neutral third-party observer, Ravi sought appointments with three different firms. One declined. Of the two that agreed, one firm was in need of cash to expand operations. Ravi pretended to be a consultant working for a multinational client with an interest in telecom.

To his surprise, the cash-strapped party was strikingly open to sharing intimate details of its working, and of the sector on the whole. Ravi prepared three types of questions: the first about the outlook of the telecom sector. He had done his homework here, so that the person on the other end would not think that he was hand-holding Ravi rather than having a discussion with someone who also brought something to the table.

The second type of questions involved the firm's rivals. A typical question: "How is the tower business of so-and-so performing in this market?" Ravi did this to get the party interested. Nothing gets them going like a nudge-wink discussion of the rivals.

The third type involved the firm itself. Employees, Ravi noticed, were more open to talking about their own companies once they had shot the breeze on rivals. The idle chatter also increased their willingness to host Ravi. The company took him so seriously they offered him lunch.

Ravi now had all the information he wanted and began working on the report. He went back and forth telephonically whenever doubts appeared in his analysis. The other party, thinking he was on to something big, helped. To humour them, Ravi said he would share the findings of his report. When he reached the end of his project, he made a PDF from publicly-available data and sent it to them.

So far, so good. The company kept calling him. Ravi first parried their queries, sending them some useless reports, until he could no longer defer their questions. He told them the client was still undecided on whether it wanted to enter India at this juncture. They understood. They really understood.

Within a week, they sent a stinker email accusing Ravi of cooking up a "cock-and-bull story" to glean "confidential data" about the company. They deemed Ravi's behaviour highly unethical and added that they would never work with Ravi's consultancy in any capacity thenceforth.

During that same week, the client for the telecom project expanded the mandate of the project to include suggestions on the corporate structure. They had been so impressed by Ravi's detailed presentation that they decided to award this other task to Ravi's consultancy as well.

Ravi, being Ravi, was wracked by guilt. "They served me lunch, dude," he said to me. I asked him if this were common practice. Not the lunch, but what he did. "Yes, everyone does it. How else do you get information on new sectors and companies?" he said.

Well, the company had certain expectations of Ravi (namely, to push its name as a contender for the client's affections), which he naturally could not fulfil. Its dismay stemmed from this unspoken quid pro quo. When Ravi did not keep his end of the bargain, it exploded.

Now, was Ravi unethical? I wouldn't say he was. American philosopher Gilbert Harman, a pioneer in the field of moral relativism, says an action carried out for one's personal gain, so long as it does no harm to another entity, is at its heart ethical. Against that yardstick, Ravi did nothing wrong.

At any rate, it is not my place to say. If I were working a hard, target-driven job, I would probably go a step further. Let there be no blood, I would say. All else is fine.

The author has switched too many jobs in the past and hopes he can hold down this one