Blogs

PRSA BEPS in Davos in 2025?
Let’s Hope So.

As the 2024 Davos meeting in Switzerland closed, CNN did an in-person, on-air straw poll with a couple dozen global executives and other important people on the question of world society being prepared for AI issues.

CNN Straw Poll Results:

  1. World society is dangerously ill-prepared for AI issues and events.
  2. The vast majority were very optimistic about the potential for AI.
  3. Crucial issues and questions were cited.

Clearly, AI will remain a big-time issue throughout the year and undoubtedly occupy a prominent position in the Davos discussions of 2025. The Public Relations Society of America’s (PRSA) newest publication, “The Ethical Use of AI for Public Relations Practitioners” could play an important role in helping world leaders sort out just how this technology is going to be utilized, managed, and in some cases survived. Ethical Use of AI Document

Many of the AI issues mentioned at Davos are reflected in PRSA’s Ethical Use document.

Some very specific concerns voiced by those attending Davos:

Retraining employees to accommodate AI, equality, ethics, the public good, possible global cooperation, security, the power of the technology itself. AI effect on productivity, polarization, and others.

These topics remain on the world’s AI discussion table.

PRSA’S Crucial Contribution

“The Ethical Use of AI for Public Relations Practitioners” breaks down three of the most crucial areas of ethical response options.

  1. Adverse endpoints that arise from operational outcomes.
  2. Examples of improper use of AI.
  3. Guidance from an ethical perspective on proper AI use.

What’s Needed Between Now and Davos 2025

In my judgment, based on what I’ve heard and seen and now with the published results of Davos, it’s quite clear that industry leaders remain confused though enthusiastic, anxious, yet committed to maximizing what AI has to offer. They are however missing one critical component which needs developing: Fact-based recommendations and an operational and reputational risk assessment related to AI issues.

Proposed
Fact Based Recommendations
Based On
Operational, Reputational, Risk-Assessment, and Recovery Readiness
Draft
Table Of Contents for
Proposed Fact-Based Recommendations
  1. The specific and attributed warnings, from the tech companies, in bold letters.
  2. The dozen or so most disastrous, costly, and worst-case guesses all gathered together in a single exhibit to focus attention and fear as well as encourage risk recognition. (We do the Reputational Risk part.)
  3. Warning signs, danger signals, and potential risks. How we might begin to recognize prevent, detect, deter, maybe deflect a disaster before it occurs
  4. Data-based Recommendations for doable operational and reputational preventive readiness and post-adverse event response readiness.
  5. Operational response readiness by scenario
  6. Reputational response readiness by scenario
  7. Organizational readiness structured around essential operational concerns. Help the bosses get ready to prepare their employees with response saavy.

My two cents: PRSA has earned a seat in the Davos AI discussion 2025

The Lexicon of Trust Building

The most serious ongoing challenge to building trust and ensuring positive relationships with customers, allies, colleagues, government, employees, and relatives is establishing trust.  It is easier to recognize the patterns of those behaviors and attitudes that damage trust and bring credibility into question. Trust is a fragile magical substance like the lignin in trees, nature’s glue that holds the tree fiber together, Trust is what holds relationships together.  Trust is the most fragile and vulnerable agent in a relationship.

Here is the Lexicon of Trust Building ingredients. The more you use, the greater the trust level.

  • Apology: The atomic energy of empathy. Apologies can stop bad things from starting and start to stop bad things. Even with extraordinary injury and harm, a prompt apology, taking responsibility for some egregious, injuring act or decision, tends to detoxify bad situations. I truly believe that apologies are always on time. However, experience shows that the earlier the apology, the more powerful its effect.
  • Candor: Truth with an attitude delivered right now. Truth plus the facts, truth plus some perspective, truth that reflects the value of other’s observations.
  • Credibility: Always conferred by others on those whose past behavior, track record, and accomplishments warrant it.
  • Empathy: Actions that speak louder than words ever can. (No PR needed)
  • Forgiveness: In those cases where someone has harmed you or those things you care about, often the hardest action to take is moving on and finding ways to help the perpetrator move on as well.
  • Integrity: Uncompromising adherence to a code of values by people, products, and companies, with the attributes of credibility, candor, sincerity, and truth.
  • Sympathy: The ongoing, often continuous, verbalization of regret, embarrassment, or personal humiliation, promptly conveyed, i.e., feeling truly sorry for someone who is experiencing pain, but stopping short of taking on the blame or the pain.
  • Trust: Generally, the absence of fear, the feeling of reliability. The knowledge that adverse situations, pain, or mistakes have less impact or can be pre-empted if a trusting relationship exists or can be built.
  • Add your own. Please.
Whenever there is or can be fear, uncertainty, or doubt, always move towards trust.

Winning When Everybody is Mad at You

These seven statements give an indication of my philosophy and strategic approach for winning:

  1. Wage peace every day. Do something else when you will have war for sure. War produces casualties and victims, all of whom work to live long enough to destroy your best efforts. Reduce the production of critics at every opportunity.
  2. Contention is the absence of agreement. Work for agreement, incrementally, every day.
  3. Getting permission depends upon gaining public agreement and consent. Avoid and resist anything, anyone, or any decision, that delays, denies, disables, or damages the permission process.
  4. Control testosterosis. Anger, irritation, frustration, confrontation cloud judgment, damage relationships, cause misunderstandings, and rarely accomplish anything good.
  5. Recognize and leverage from the patterns of democracy, avoid political games and game players, all those people have different agendas from yours.
  6. Work as directly as you can. Like most everything that matters in life, agreement is generally achieved, when the principals relentlessly commit to sit down face-to-face and directly work it out.
  7. Success depends on communication, common sense, direct, prompt action, empathy, transparency and engagement. Explain to everyone as well as remind them of your communication and behavior intentions so they will know how to behave in return.

Winning depends on recognizing five realities:

  1. Accomplishing your goals is going to take longer than ever imagined even to achieve significant milestones;
  2. Success will defy financial management, more money will be spent for things one never imagined would happen, or be requested or required;
  3. The stomach for all the lies, misunderstandings, deceptions, bad behaviors and misrepresentations, angry, frightened and powerless people, with a willing media, will create, and the outrageous motives they will ascribe to you, with all of your explanations, good work and intentions just bouncing off.
  4. The staying power required because democracy is slow, sometimes silly, even stupid, sloppy, expensive, and endless.
  5. Unlike financial transactions, chemical experiments, science, finance and engineering, public processes rarely have endpoints.

Some of this sounds incredibly pessimistic. But it’s really a description of how things are actually going to go. If democracy is one thing, it is a process. Those who propose, if they can stay the course, can expect to achieve less than they hoped, sometimes far less, but wind up with more than they need to achieve their objectives.

I love to be wrong. But I’m rarely surprised, I pretty much know what is going to happen and work preemptively and constructively to shorten the timelines and lower the barriers that are inevitable to succeed.

Stop with the Wandering Generalities, Please. Get Specific.

Wandering generalities are a plague on humanity. When in doubt, people hide behind bland, useless, and often misleading statements. Below I show three examples of these typical types of statements and how to make them meaningfully specific.

Wandering GeneralitiesMeaningfully Specific Translation
1. “We’re a great company.”1. “We are a powerful company, leading three important business sectors, digitalization, transmission efficiency and end user acceptance.”
2. “Everybody loves our company.”2. “We use three techniques every month to test our customer acceptance: direct contact with key users; short, direct questionnaires; and, seeking testimonials.”
3. “We’ve successfully dealt with this problem in the past.”3. “We made three crucial improvements in this process starting four years ago: first, we significantly reduced defects; second, we began more careful education of our customers; and third, we introduced a monitoring program to catch defects earlier.”

Translate Generalities into Specificity

Rather than say:

  • Everyone…name them
  • Everybody…name them
  • They…say specifically who
  • That…say specifically what
  • Theirs…name or itemize them
  • Those…name or specifically identify what it is
  • It’s…Again identify what It’s is
  • Her…name her
  • His…name him

You get the idea.

Generalities are barriers to understanding and actually help people miss the importance of what you are trying to communicate.

More GeneralitiesMeaningfully Specific Translation
1. “Everything will be fine, we’ve been through this before.”1. “We live by three success initiatives: start early; stay customer engaged; and follow up for results. These three initiatives will work to improve our accuracy, activity, and performance.”
2. “I’ve always enjoyed their work.”2. “The strategy teams work is essential to our success. We need their accuracy, their persistence, and their intuitiveness.”
3. “They’ve always been a championship outfit.”3. “Mary and Bill always show their leadership, their skill, and their consistent responsiveness.”
4. “This idea is very important.”4. “Our success depends on three crucial ingredients: speed, accuracy, and choosing a limited number of targets.”

Also see Packing and Bundling.

© Copyright 2023, James E. Lukaszewski. America’s Crisis Guru®Get permission to reproduce or quote. Contact the copyright holder, jel@e911.com.

Thousands of Human Starfish, The Story of an Extreme Decency

The Time Before:

Steve Harrison became a client of mine in 1995. From that first engagement and a number of others over the years, Steve and I became close friends, as did our wives, Barbara and Shirley. It would be fair to say that Steve became more or less a disciple of my kind of crisis management and other management and leadership recovery techniques. He was already known as Mr. Decency throughout his industry. Something that further deepened our relationship. In 2014, Steve and I decided to write a book on civility and decency. Something that has long since largely disappeared from American culture. There are still too few signs of these important cultural qualities returning anytime soon.  

The Diagnosis:

In 2014, my wife of 50 years was diagnosed with bilateral ovarian cancer. That evening we had dinner with Steve and Shirley and among the topics of conversation was this new frightening development in Barbara’s life.

The First Call:

The next day, Steve and Shirley called together and talked to us briefly about what they learned the night before and offered to be helpful in any way that they could. For Barbara and I, this was the beginning of a long journey cumulating in her death from Alzheimer’s in August of 2019.

The Next 2,999 Calls:

Following that first phone call from Steve and Shirley, they called us nearly every single day from the time of Barbara’s diagnosis with cancer and the follow-up diagnosis of Alzheimer’s. The number of phone calls from these two dear friends from that first conversation to a kind of final conversation in late 2019, the Harrisons had talked to us almost 3000 times. Stop a moment, take a breath, and realize what a totally amazing gift for a couple of human beings to do for another couple of human beings. Steve and I finished the book, “The Decency Code, The Leader’s Path to Building Integrity and Trust,” and it was published by McGraw Hill in 2021. We discussed another book project going forward, but nature intervened, and Steve passed away in July of 2021.

Steve’s Legacy Lives On:

I’ll never have the opportunity to repay this extraordinary decency. Shirley and I do keep in touch. And I write, quote, and talk about Steve whenever I can.  He was such an extraordinary friend and his 2005 book, “The Manager’s Book of Decencies, How Small Gestures (he called them small decencies) Build Great Companies,” from McGraw Hill is a classic business book in the field of decency and civility.

Steve’s Life Metaphor:

Steve’s favorite story and the metaphor for his life was about a person searching for seashells on the seashore and coming across a starfish unlikely to survive being caught aground. Almost absent-mindedly the man picked up the starfish and tossed it back into the sea.

Human Starfish:

In the course of that starfish’s life, it will reproduce thousands of times and produce an extraordinary number of offsprings and generations. Steve’s company Lee Hect Harrison, which he and two colleagues founded in the late 1990’s, and later acquired by Adecco Inc., the world’s largest part-time work placement company, made Steve’s company now the LHH division of  Adecco, the world’s largest outplacement firm. The purpose of the LHH division of Adecco is to help people intentionally unemployed by large businesses to learn new job-finding skills and other techniques to regain employment and return to productive lives. You might say his company has a way of returning human starfish to the working world by the thousands every year.

What an Amazing Legacy:

Decencies come in all sizes and shapes. This is the most extreme, miraculous, and wonderful decency for two people I’ve ever seen. Give it a try.  

Maybe The Tech Industry Deserves a Platinum Anvil?

With Just three words . . . “Leave it alone,” the tech industry globally mobilized thousands of companies, organizations, individuals, and industries. Like an experienced parent who wants their child to do something, or not do something, but might have difficulty persuading them, they simply say, “Don’t do . . . you name it” and it becomes a do-or-die mission. So it has become for AI.

Are these tech people brilliant, or are they really that smart? We may never know. What we do know is that thousands have been mobilized, and millions or billions are being spent and all in the quest to figure something out with little or no help from the tech industries who started all of this. Clearly, the tech industries deserve a prize of some kind.

Never have so few words mobilized so many human beings and a colossal amount of cash for what appears far less fearsome than forecast.

Typically, in such a huge venture, something called an “Operational and reputational risk assessment and fact based recommendations” would have been prepared. In the case of AI, since no one had any facts to go on, everything kind of got made up in a huge fiction like activity. Which has yet to yield much except sporadic anecdotal success stories. And one large failure that of Donald Trump’s former attorney using AI to generate what turned out to be fake legal references for a motion he was proposing in federal court.

That’s because, of course, the tech industry does not intend to share additional information until it’s in their interest to do so. During the last year, I have attended a number of policy-level discussions (people who own, run, and make crucial decisions in the organizations)  of AI and while organizations like PRSA were busy developing hypothetical situational responses based on zero facts and data, the tech companies were having a great success with “leave it alone.” Why spoil all the fun with facts?

In contrast, virtually every policy-level discussion I attended developed only a sketchy, fuzzy concept called things like, “Responsible AI.” The responsibilities were described in a list of words with little explanation: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability. Sometimes described as core principles without much additional explanation. It’s still impossible to know what guidance is truly needed. We’ll need a few surprises and disasters to begin developing useful information.

It’s probably time for all of us to get back to work on our regular jobs and regular activities and await the inevitable catastrophes the media has predicted, always aiming for the worst-case scenarios. Where are the truth tellers when you need them most?

Destructive Language Decimates Trust

Leadership language choices in difficult situations are often early indicators of dysfunction. In fact, their adverse behaviors and language choices are often diagnostic of their dysfunction. Here are some examples to watch for:

  • Denial
  • Defensiveness
  • Deflection
  • Denigration
  • Disrespect
  • Demeaning
  • Discrediting
  • Distain

Not only do these behaviors, attitudes, and language choices destroy trust, they create victims, critics and angry people, families and organizations. These groups will work tirelessly to make leadership pay the price for unwanted behaviors.

These negative examples are enormously time-wasting, often trigger similar even more emotionally negative responses in return, foster contentiousness, confrontation, contempt, confusion and consternation. These behavior choices are corrosive to trust.

James E. Lukaszewski (loo-ka-SHEV-skee) is widely known as America’s Crisis Guru. He is a speaker, author (13 books and hundreds of articles and monographs), lecturer and ethicist (Emeritus member of the PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards BEPS). His book Lukaszewski on Crisis Communication, What Your CEO Needs to Know About Reputation Risk and Crisis Management had dozens of examples of corrosive behaviors and what to do about them.

© Copyright 2023, James E. Lukaszewski. America’s Crisis Guru® Get permission to reproduce or quote. Contact the copyright holder, jel@e911.com.

New Year’s Resolutions 2024

Action #1 Required This Day

Your Personal Daily Ethics Audit

By James E. Lukaszewski,
 ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus

Resolve today to get in the habit of regularly assessing your personal daily ethics exposure. It’s likely that your exposures will be a surprise. This paper presents a simple series of response options. In my crisis work the appearance of ethical questions was pretty frequent and I found that I needed a way to quickly assess these situations and determine what, if any, action might be needed.

We start with the first signs…the queasy stomach that tells you something is out of order or going there, perhaps soon. Then the remaining steps in the process are designed to help you move into a response mode if necessary, even a deeply responsive mode if extremely necessary.

Click on Moral Questions link to review a blog post for deeper penetration of more serious situations.

Step One:
Respond to First Signs or Concerns

The moment your stomach gets that twinge about what you are doing or planning to do, or someone else in your company is starting or plans to start doing, stop and ask yourself:

    1. What is the ideal ethical behavior here?
    2. How are ethical questions being surfaced and addressed?
    3. What is remaining unsaid, ignored, actually covered up?
    4. When will leaders address the ethical expectations of others?
    5. Is the profit or personal gain motive in balance with The PRSA Code of Ethics and your own ethical expectations?
  2.  
  3. First mentioned to me eons ago by Emmanuel Tchividjian former PRSA BEPS member, Principal –  The Markus Gabriel Group – US Phone Number: 646-209-0711, Norwegian Phone Number: 983-555-63,    Email: emmanueltchividjian@gmail.com, Website: www.markusgabrielgroup.com.

Step Two:
Ethical Decision-Making Guide to
Help Resolve Ethical Dilemmas

By Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, JD, APR, Former Member BEPS
On PRSA.org

*Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, J.D., APR – Former Member of BEPS   Director and Professor, The Zimmerman School at University of South Florida   Email: fitzpatrick10@usf.edu   Website: usf.edu/zimmermanschool

For public relations and other professionals, ethical dilemmas arise when responsibilities and loyalties conflict and a decision about the appropriate – i.e., ethical – course of action must be made. Often, a choice is required among actions that meet competing obligations. For example, when might the obligation to serve the public interest override loyalty to clients? When does a particular stakeholder’s interest take priority over an employer’s interest? In other words, just exactly what is “responsible advocacy”? Apply these questions to sort things out:

    1. Define the specific ethical malpractice issue/conflict.
    2. Identify internal/external factors (e.g., legal, political, social, economic) that may influence the decision.
    3. Identify key values.
    4. Identify the parties who will be affected by the decision and define the public relations professional’s obligation to each.
    5. Select ethical principles to guide the decision-making process.
    6. Make a decision and justify it.
  2.  

  3. Step Three:
    Use The Lexicon Of Unethical
    Public Relations Behavior

Every Code provision in the PRSA Code of Ethics, as well as every Professional Standards Advisory (PSA) contains examples of improper conduct. As subsequent Professional Standards Advisories are developed by the PRSA Board of Ethics and Professional Standards (BEPS), approved and deployed, additional terms to describe improper conduct will be further explained, and examples provided.

The current PRSA Code lexicon of improper conduct includes:

    • Unethical conduct – Clear conduct that goes against the Code.

    • Improper conduct – Conduct that should be questioned.

    • Malpractice – Obviously, poor or flawed judgment and behavior.

    • Inappropriate behavior – Feels wrong, needs to be stopped.

    • Inconsistent with the Code

    • Disruptive to or can undermine ethical practice – Behavior that should stop, may require remedial action.

    • Destructive to the reputation of practitioners, our profession, or our Society – You’ll know it when you see it, stand up, speak out, and stop it.

a. Voluntary Societies Have,
Established Inspirational Codes Of Conduct.

Journalism, public relations, advertising, Word of Mouth (WOM), The Global Alliance, and many other voluntary professional or trade associations, failing to have a legal basis for using enforceable regulatory oversight, have focused on inspiration and education of their members. Lawyers, doctors, accountants, police officers, dentists, hairdressers, barbers, and other services that are licensed by a state, county or government authority, can and do impose penalties and sanction violations. The PRSA Code is an aspirational document designed to facilitate, educate, and inspire ethical behavior and also to call out malpractice and unethical conduct.  

b. Using the PRSA Code of Conduct (From PRSA.org)
With Examples of Improper Conduct

Conduct #1 – Free Flow of Information

Core Principle:

Protecting and advancing the free flow of accurate and truthful information is essential to serving the public interest and contributing to informed decision-making in a democratic society.

Intent:

  • To maintain the integrity of relationships with the media, government officials, and the public.

  • To aid informed decision-making.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Preserve the integrity of the process of communication.

  • Be honest and accurate in all communications.

  • Act promptly to correct erroneous communications for which the practitioner is responsible.

  • Preserve the free flow of unprejudiced information when giving or receiving gifts by ensuring that gifts are nominal, legal, and infrequent.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under this Provision:

  • A member representing a ski manufacturer gives a pair of expensive racing skis to a sports magazine columnist, to influence the columnist to write favorable articles about the product.

  • A member entertains a government official beyond legal limits and/or in violation of government reporting requirements.

Conduct #2 – Competition

Core Principle:

Promoting healthy and fair competition among professionals preserves an ethical climate while fostering a robust business environment.

Intent:

  • To promote respect and fair competition among public relations professionals.

  • To serve the public interest by providing the widest choice of practitioner options.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Follow ethical hiring practices designed to respect free and open competition without deliberately undermining a competitor.

  • Preserve intellectual property rights in the marketplace.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • A member employed by a “client organization” shares helpful information with a counseling firm that is competing with others for the organization’s business.

  • A member spreads malicious and unfounded rumors about a competitor in order to alienate the competitor’s clients and employees in a ploy to recruit people and business.

Conduct #3 – Disclosure of Information

Core Principle:

Open communication fosters informed decision-making in a democratic society.

Intent:

To build trust with the public by revealing all information needed for responsible decision-making.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Be honest and accurate in all communications.

  • Act promptly to correct erroneous communications for which the member is responsible.

  • Investigate the truthfulness and accuracy of information released on behalf of those represented.

  • Reveal the sponsors for causes and interests represented.

  • Disclose financial interest (such as stock ownership) in a client’s organization.

  • Avoid deceptive practices.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under this Provision:

  • Front groups: A member implements “grassroots” campaigns or letter-writing campaigns to legislators on behalf of undisclosed interest groups.

  • Lying by omission: A practitioner for a corporation knowingly fails to release financial information, giving a misleading impression of the corporation’s performance.

  • A member discovers inaccurate information disseminated via a website or media kit and does not correct the information.

  • A member deceives the public by employing people to pose as volunteers to speak at public hearings and participate in “grassroots” campaigns.

Conduct #4 – Safeguarding Confidences

Core Principle:

Client trust requires appropriate protection of confidential and private information.

Intent:

To protect the privacy rights of clients, organizations, and individuals by safeguarding confidential information.

Guidelines:

  • A member shall: Safeguard the confidences and privacy rights of present, former, and prospective clients and employees.

  • Protect privileged, confidential, or insider information gained from a client or organization.

  • Immediately advise an appropriate authority if a member discovers that confidential information is being divulged by an employee of a client company or organization.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • A member changes jobs, takes confidential information, and uses that information in the new position to the detriment of the former employer.

  • A member intentionally leaks proprietary information to the detriment of some other party.

Conduct #5 – Conflicts of Interest

Core Principle:

Avoiding real, potential or perceived conflicts of interest builds the trust of clients, employers, and the publics.

Intent:

  • To earn trust and mutual respect with clients or employers.

  • To build trust with the public by avoiding or ending situations that put one’s personal or professional interests in conflict with society’s interests.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Act in the best interests of the client or employer, even subordinating the member’s personal interests.

  • Avoid actions and circumstances that may appear to compromise good business judgment or create a conflict between personal and professional interests.

  • Disclose promptly any existing or potential conflict of interest to affected clients or organizations.

  • Encourage clients and customers to determine if a conflict exists after notifying all affected parties.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • The member fails to disclose that he or she has a strong financial interest in a client’s chief competitor.

  • The member represents a “competitor company” or a “conflicting interest” without informing a prospective client.

Conduct #6 – Enhancing the Profession

Core Principle:

Public relations professionals work constantly to strengthen the public’s trust in the profession.

Intent:

  • To build respect and credibility with the public for the profession of public relations.

  • To improve, adapt and expand professional practices.

Guidelines:

A member shall:

  • Acknowledge that there is an obligation to protect and enhance the profession.

  • Keep informed and educated about practices in the profession to ensure ethical conduct.

  • Actively pursue Personal Professional Development.

  • Decline representation of clients or organizations that urge or require actions contrary to this Code.

  • Accurately define what public relations activities can accomplish.

  • Counsel subordinates in proper ethical decision-making.

  • Require that subordinates adhere to the ethical requirements of the Code.

  • Report practices that fail to comply with the Code, whether committed by PRSA members or not, to the appropriate authority.

Examples of Improper Conduct Under This Provision:

  • A PRSA member declares publicly that a product the client sells is safe, without disclosing evidence to the contrary.

  • A member initially assigns some questionable client work to a non-member practitioner to avoid the ethical obligation of PRSA membership.

A Days End Assessment

When those days come along where your stomach is queasy at the very beginning, you know you’re going to have a long day and you will want to have a sensible process for wrapping things up at the end of the day. Just take a few moments to review what happened during the day from an ethical point of view on the things you need to be concerned about and take action on. Create a simple to-do list to get these things done before they fall through a crack.

If you have any questions at all, contact your Chapter Ethics Officer who is ready and waiting to be of assistance. Good luck and remember, working through these ethical issues and questions is one of the most important things we can do as practitioners.

I, too, am available 24/7 to answer questions and to be of service in these important matters at any time. Besides, I’ve committed my life to working these areas of importance and really do love talking about them and helping others have better days. jel@e911.com

James E. Lukaszewski, ABC, Fellow IABC, APR, Fellow PRSA, BEPS Emeritus, is the longest-serving member of BEPS, 35 years. In 2015, the PRSA Board of Directors conferred Emeritus status. So far, Jim is the only Emeritus BEPS board member. He publishes a wide variety of commentaries, lexicons, manifestos, and analyses of ethics practices and malpractices in public relations, business, and society every year.

Moral Questioning A Key Process For Resolving Ethical Dilemmas  

Step One:
Noticing Early Warning Signs

The moment your stomach gets that twinge about what you are doing, just hearing about, or planning to do, or someone else in your company, your family, or the community is starting or plans to start doing, stop and ask yourself, and perhaps others:

  1. What is (is there) ideal behavior here?
  2. How are ethical questions being surfaced and addressed?
  3. What remains unsaid, ignored, actually covered up?
  4. When will leaders address the ethical expectations of others?
  5. Is the profit (personal benefit) motive in balance with your own ethical expectations?

Step Two:
Use the Fitzpatrick Ethical Decision-Making Guide
to Help Resolve, Some Ethical Dilemmas

By Kathy R. Fitzpatrick, JD, APR, Former Member Public Relations Society Of America (PRSA) Board Of Ethics And Professional Standards (BEPS) Found On PRSA.org

For public relations and other professionals, ethical dilemmas arise when responsibilities and loyalties conflict and a decision about the appropriate – i.e., ethical – course of action must be made. Often, a choice is required among actions that meet competing obligations. For example, when might the obligation to serve the public interest override loyalty to clients? When does a particular stakeholder’s interest take priority over an employer’s interest? In other words, just exactly what is “responsible advocacy”? Apply these questions to sort things out:

  1. Define the specific ethical issue/conflict.
  2. Identify internal/external factors (e.g., legal, political, social, economic) that may influence the decision.
  3. Identify key values.
  4. Identify the parties who will be affected by the decision and define the public relations professional’s obligation to each.
  5. Select ethical principles to guide the decision-making process.
  6. Make a decision and justify it.

Step Three:
When We Need to Go Beyond the Fitzpatrick Model
The Moral Questioning Menu

Often at first, it seems most ethical questions have simple direct answers. Closer examination generally requires that we expand our investigations and questions to develop more thoughtful, deeper, and often more complex responses.

This list of questions is a menu of deeper exploration of ethical issues. Pick the questions that are most likely to reveal and explore important information to help you make your decisions and choices.

  • Who does the questionable behavior bother?
  • Who has been involved, injured, afflicted, or victimized??
  • Who made decisions?
  • Who was asking questions, and of whom?
  • What affirmative steps are now being taken to remedy the situation?
  • What are the principles involved?
  • What are the relevant facts of the situation?
  • What alternatives are available?
  • What decisions were made, when, where, and by whom?
  • What did we know, and when did we know it?
  • What ethical standards or principles of conduct are involved or at issue?
  • What is the fundamental cause of the situation?  Omission? Commission? Negligence? Arrogance? Action? Inaction? Denial? Indecision?
  • What is the truth?
  • What lessons can the organization learn as this dilemma is revealed?
  • What other questionable decisions or actions may come to light?
  • What was sacrificed to benefit the outcome or the victims?
  • How could this have been avoided?
  • How will future unethical behavior be disclosed? To whom and how fast?
  • How will our principles be advanced or violated by each alternative action?
  • Is it really our problem?
  • Is it really an ethical question?
  • Are all the critical ethical questions being asked and answered?
  • Are our actions open and honest?
  • As an organization are we prepared to comment on the behavior that led to ethical compromise?
  • Did this happen because there’s an institutional code of silence?
  • Has all of the information been presented honestly and correctly thus far?
  • Was there a serious and prompt attempt to find out what was really going on?
  1. When bad things happen, they often come to our attention as dilemmas – that is, situations where we must choose between two equally bad, sometimes repugnant choices:
    1. “Are you still beating your wife or just being arrogant and obstructive?”
    2. “Did you or your company/organization do this intentionally, maliciously, or negligently?”
  2. Bad situations often have a moral dimension and questions that need to be asked promptly to assess the moral dimension, if any. Asking these moral questions early can trigger prompt, appropriate detoxifying actions and decisions and assess appropriate ethical behaviors.

Failure to ask questions can be considered an ethical failure by omission. Ask the right questions early as suspect situations are developing. Moral questioning may help you to head off serious difficulty or perhaps even enhance the value of your decisions and actions.

The Bosses Most Critical
Roles in Crisis

Effective crisis responses are led by leaders with five specific personal and operational roles in crisis situations.

  1. Assert the moral authority expected of ethical leadership.
    1. Leadership takes appropriate and expected steps to learn from and deal with the issues crises situations raise, very promptly.  
    2. Moral authority consists of:
      1. Candor and disclosure.
      2. Prompt patient explanation.
      3. Commitment to communicate.
      4. Oversite with empathy.
      5. Commitment to zero errors, victimizations, and avoidable mistakes.
      6. Restitution, penance, or at least maintenance while victim issues are resolved.
  2. Take responsibility for the care of victims.
    1. Victims and victimization provide the energy that makes these situations so explosive, highly emotional, and unpredictable.
    2. Taking responsibility for victims moderates and mitigates the emotion of crisis events.
    3. Yes, it can be interpreted as taking responsibility. Just clearly explain the extent and duration of your assistance. Simply ignoring victims creates a raft of new complications and blame shifting towards you.
  3. Set the appropriate tone for the organizational response.
    1. If leadership gripes and groans, everybody gripes and groans.
    2. If leaders whine, everybody whines.
    3. Productive, constructive, instructive, and inspirational tone from the top will move the entire organization towards a more prompt resolution of the crisis, limit the impact, and mitigate reputation damage. An empathetic tone reduces the tension and stress victims feel.
  4. Set the organizations emotional voice.
    1. Be compassionate.
    2. Be helpful.
    3. Be courteous.
    4. Stop taking events, comments, and commentary personally.
    5. Communicate regularly directly with victims, survivors, and survivor families.
  5. Commit random acts of leadership at every level. Teach, encourage, and insist that every level of manager in the organization does the same.
    1. Walk the floor.
    2. Talk the floor.
    3. Encourage people.
    4. Knock down barriers.
    5. Help everyone stay focused on the ultimate response goals of the organization.

Silence is a Toxic Mistake to Your Reputation, and Possibly Your Career.

Above all begin communicating immediately. The most frequent, permanent, and avoidable reputation and career damage comes from remaining silent.

There is no believable or rational reason for saying nothing even for a brief period of time. If the crisis response is technically perfect, the leader will be criticized for doing nothing. Excuses for silence never pass the straight-face test. Whatever you do, it turns out that saying nothing means doing nothing. This becomes the legacy of even timely responses when there is failure to communicate.