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System Administrator Ethical Responsibilities

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by mlr_monk

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As a systems admin at my company, one of my responsibilities is to monitor and report employees who violate our technology policies.
Let me present my question in the form of a hypothetical.

A married employee is found to be having a love affair with someone who works for a vendor that your company does business with. The employees exchange sexual emails, images, and hardcore movies of them pleasuring them self...and more. The person at your company has pictures of their wedding, spouse, and children up in their office.
You have to see the employee at your office everyday, but now that you know their secret and have seen them in the movies you are disgusted every time you see them in the office.
You bring the matter to the attention of upper management. Because the person is a high producer with your company they give the person a slap on the wrist and tell them they don't care what they do as long as they do it not on company time using company resources and that?s that.
They (management) chose only to hear descriptions of the illicit content seen by you...they didn?t want to see it for themselves after hearing what it was.

Here come my questions:

So, should everything end at this point or is there any kind of obligation to contact the vendor and report their employee's misconduct to the company's IT department who has been in contact with the employee from your organization?
How do you deal with seeing the employee in the office now that you know what you know and have seen what you have seen?
If you were the sys admin, how would you personally respond the situation?

8 replies

by charliespencer

You've reported the misuse of company equipment in compliance with your company's policy. You don't know what policies the vendor has in place, and it's not your job or ethical obligation to ensure the vendor's employees comply with the vendor's policies. How you deal with the offending local employee is a relationship issue, not one of IT ethics. If this person's actions offend you personally, I recommend keeping your interactions to the minimum required and confined to work-related topics.

by notsochiguy

I'm of the opinion that your position is not one of policing corporate/personal morals. Despite how much one's behavior may repulse you, it isn't your job to pass judgment & levy punishment for it.

As such, contacting the vendor shouldn't be an option (that's for the vendor's HR staff to figure out/deal with) unless you have overwhelming tangible proof that the 'relationship' has resulted in an unfair competitive advantage/disadvantage of some sort. And frankly, that would be exceptionally difficult to prove from the system admin's chair.

In terms of your co-worker, and your company...it doesn't sound as if you have much recourse. You duly brought information to the superiors, and they chose a course of action (well, inaction in this case). The exception I can see to this depends on how you came across the movies.

If you came across the movies by chance, by working on the system directly, you may have a valid sexual harassment complaint (I'm not a lawyer by any stretch, so I'd advise running this past someone knowledgeable in this arena...I'm just speaking on what I've seen prior). I saw a case of this play out once at a Big 4 firm. Because the system was knowingly transferred with the questionable material, it constituted a case of harassment (as I recall, the HR reps equated it to someone handing a co-worker a copy of their own wedding night follies video...true, the recipient DIDN'T HAVE to watch, but the person handing it over had a reasonable expectation that it would be watched).

If you were to pursue that, in the short term, at least, you'd probably be protected (depending on what whistle blower laws exist in your area, as well as the ease of which a lawsuit could be filed & won should employer terminate you as a result of this...again, I defer to my legal disclaimer above...consult someone).

In the long term, though, I'd imagine you'd be treated as a sort of pariah by the firm, and be made miserable enough to the point where you'd leave voluntarily.

Which all leads me to my main point:

Given all this, would you want to continue working for a firm that:
--Compromises the firm's reputation so easily(if word of this gets out, the public relations hit would be immense)
--Compromises every employee's integrity for the sake of sales (look at the position this situation leaves the admin in)
--Compromises every employee's well being (depending on the size of the firm, it may only take one lawsuit to bring it all down, and every employee will be out of a job)for the sake of protecting human detritus
???

People like this (both the perps as well as those that enable them) usually get their comeuppance in one form or another (i.e. when the dude's wife gets dressed up to go out with her friends, somewhere, in the back of his mind, he'll have that little seed of doubt...wondering if she's about to do to him what he's been doing to her....guilt is one helluva thing).

Look for another opportunity, and let Karma/Fate/Random Luck take its course.

That's just my opinion, though.

by mlr_monk

Initial messages were caught during daily spam screening. The majority of correspondences were found in sent and deleted items folders as were the illicit material including the movies. The content could not have been accessed by other standard employees.
The employee is very cocky and is a typical sales person (fake smile and all). Unfortunately avoidance is difficult.
Man I have those images burned into my brain--its hard to forget that stuff. Those movies were off the charts nasty.
I probably should have showed them to management anyway just for the shock effect.
I completely agree with you about the compromising position this puts the company and the other employees in. Not good.
Would it be acceptable to anonymously tip off the IT staff at other company?

by rfink

If standard employees don't have access to it how would you anonymously tip off someone else without pointing the finger at yourself?

Your management knows you know about it (you told it). IMO you're setting yourself up for a firing or a lawsuit. Leave well enough alone. You told your bosses. It's on them.

by notsochiguy

...probably isn't the question to ask. ADVISABLE is the real question.

I'd say no; at least, not until you've gotten your feet firmly planted elsewhere. It seems that, right now, there are very few people that know about the activities; and if an issue were to arise due to an anonymous tip, it would find its way back to you.

The guy will slip up...his type always do. If he is dumb enough to have that stuff on a corporate asset, he is dumb enough to leave his e-mail open at home while he goes to the commode, or to call his wife by the wrong name, or commit any one of a multitude of other slip-ups.

It may not be tomorrow, or next week, or even while you're at the company...but trust me, he'll get his somehow, sometime.

by mlr_monk

Point taken saigman. What goes around comes around.
Part of the job is keeping company secrets so I guess my hands are tied.
Thanks for the advice guys.

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