Discussion on:

10+ things you can do to avoid ethical breaches

The person knew he wasn't entitled to the information and deliberately framed his request to avoid being rejected. His actions may be legal but they weren't ethical.

...to communicate (in writing, speech, body gesture, etc.) with deliberate intent to deceive, or convey a false impression, is a lie.

A better illustration of #7 (although I don't have a suggestion) should have been used.

Thanks for commenting. See my point below. What if he had approached the relatives and asked THEM to turn in the request, and then when they received it, allow him to have it? Assuming relatives agree, would you say this approach beats what he did before?

Maintaining plausible deniability is a weasel's way to avoid legal liability, not moral responsibility. This is unethical on its face. Would you want your doctor, lawyer, accountant, spouse, or colleagues to be "ethical" in this manner? This is why lawyers should not write about ethics.

I too agree #7 -is- an ethical breech. When I saw the title of that one, I thought it was going to say, "Punt." Hope the boss gives it to somebody else with no ethical qualms (such as someone who would avoid giving accurate information to try to bypass set procedures).

How I get bosses to punt or rethink is to demand an e-mail first directing me specifically to do something so I can fall back on the 'orders are orders defense." Of course, I've never had to (so far) because any time I raise the red flag like that, the boss realizes it was a dumb idea.

While it doesn't always make you the most popular person at work, I find that most situations (ethical or otherwise) are best handled by sticking to the facts. Once you remove personal feelings and agendas from most issues, they become much clearer and easier to navigate. It also gives the impression that you are not in a direct "pissing" contest with another person, just combating the issue at hand.

Remove #7 - it's got no place in an article alleging to talk about ethics
Renumber #8 - #10 as # 7- #9.
Add #10 - Be elsewhere. An occasional ethical issue can arise among normally ethical people if no other reason than someone not immediately seeing the ethical dimension to a possible solution. When that happens, simply bringing up the ethical problem should be sufficient to make it go away. However, if you're seeing ethical problems come up over and over again, leave. Either you'll get corrupted yourself or you'll be damaged by the fallout when the place crashes. (Eron ring a bell?)

I anonymously turned in a coworker for always watching porn at work (it's especially bad because we work with kids). The other bad part was that coworker was buddies with the boss and my boss force the investigations unit to give up my name.
Well for the next year of working there I was constantly harassed until they found out that my boss was stealing, but couldn't press charges, so the just demoted him. That is when my bosses boss took over the harassment until she was forced to retire (she didn???t realize that I took notes and logs of everything at that point and turned it into our director).
At this point I was seen as a troublemaker who chewed thru bosses so I left that agency and went somewhere else. I am so much happier now. I'm still friends with people there that are still grumbling about the lack of ethics.

Moral of this story is: If you are going to turn someone in who is buddies of the boss, make sure they can't find out it was you that did it.

"Even though he avoided the official form, he told me that he still was successful most of the time."

So, rather than be open that what he wanted was a violation of the established ethical privacy policy, he was dishonest by omission, and the not so ethical bureaubums aided and abetted, thus demonstrating, once again, that even when they have established policies to the contrary, bureaubums readily violate privacy without batting an eye, and are never ever to be trusted in that regard.

I agree with the others that you just should not do such things.

"Obviously, documentation of key matters is critical in these situations. Make a note, via memo or email, of all disclosures you made regarding conflicts, any consent from other people, and any concerns you have about potential unethical approaches."

This is a bit better, though not much. What they have in common is trying to get away with an ethical breach and still trying to avoid the worst of the penalties, thus encouraging more ethical breaches of that kind.

But it's good advice for whistle-blowers, too, if re-aligned. Carefully document the nature of the managers' or executives' ethical breach. Get a copy of relevant statutes and the dates when you pointed it out to them. Be sure to copy a few others, at first within the organization, and then, if reform does not come about, to others outside the organization, private investigators if you can afford them, the media, congress-critters (most effective if the critter is of the opposite party of the chief offender), prosecutors, regulatory agencies. Most important, though, is to inform their intended victims so that they may take measures to defend themselves and join in the suits.

The most difficult issue I've run into is the conflict between upholding someone's privacy and giving him credit (e.g. source citation).

Finally, I concur with Lazarus439.

How about this method of not lying on the form: Suppose this guy is able to track down actual relatives. he then says to them, "please can you send in the request for the death certificate, then when you get it, give it to me"? Of course, it might look creepy and seem like stalking, but would you agree this is better than sending in the letter? In fact, he gave me no indication that he knew the requirements. Is the situation different here, vs. deliberately evading the requirement?

Here you are suggesting find an ethical way of doing the same thing which is a good idea but you already have it as #6. The revised example is obviously a more ethical way to do it since you are dealing with an event from 100 years ago and so being approached is unlikely to be very upsetting to the families.

However #7 as written suggests you avoid the question. In some cases just not doing the unethical thing will work because those wanting it done will not want to make an issue of it. This is similar to your point about documenting the problem.