A director of a mental health agency over-represents the number of clients his agency served for the previous year. The agency gets funds from the state based on how many clients it serves each year. The director knows that if he were to report the correct number of clients, the agency would get significantly less money to use for the next year. A reduction in funds would mean that some staff would have to be laid off, causing the agency to help even fewer clients. A supervisor allows her staff to take an hour for lunch even though company policy allows only 30 minute lunch breaks. The supervisor's philosophy is that as long as her employees get their work done, it won't make a difference if they are allowed an hour for lunch instead of 30 minutes. A big brother raised in a family who believes that honesty is always the best policy tells his little sister that she looks great in her new dress, even though he thinks she looks terrible. The examples above involve people in leadership positions. A leader is someone people look up to and are willing to follow; it is a person who is able to get others to reach a goal, who is in a position to guide and influence others' behavior and professional and personal lives; and it is a person of integrity. So based on that definition, any one of us can be, and have been, leaders at one time or another. A professor is a leader in his or her classroom; a director is the leader of an agency; a supervisor is the leader of her department; and an older brother is, or should be, a leader of his younger siblings. What the leaders in the above examples have in common is that they are bending the rules. Bending the rules means going against policy, regulations, or rules, whether they are set by the leader, as in the professor's dassroom policy of failing students with poor attendance, or set by an organization, such as the policy of 30-minute lunch breaks for all employees. There are two thoughts about this concept of "bending the rules": One is that it is unethical and the other is that is it necessary. Those who believe it is necessary to bend the rules will say that all rules are meant to be broken. Proponents of bending the rules say that it's a moral cop-out when leaders choose not to bend the rules in situations where bending the rules, going against policy, is actually the right and ethical thing to do. For example, in the first situation above, the reason why that one student missed so many days during the semester is because he had cancer and his treatments often made him too sick to come to class. In this case, say the supporters of bending the rules, for the professor to say, "I must abide by my policy," would be a moral cop-out against doing the responsible thing. Sometimes, they say, a leader has to bend the rules for the bigger good. However, critics of leaders who bend the rules say that a policy is a policy-it's there for a reason and should be followed at all times. If a leader doesn't like the policy or rule, that leader should do what is necessary to change the policy so that he or should won't have to bend it. So, these critics might say in the previous example that the professor, in her policy, should state that allowances should be made for students who miss classes due to a long-term illness. If that wasn't stated in her policy, then it would be unethical for her to break the policy, no matter the reason. Bending the rules breaks trust with others. Critics hold leaders to a higher standard than other employees. Because leaders are, or should be, role models, anything they do is often accepted and copied by others. So, if a leader breaks a policy, what they are saying to others is that it is okay to bend the rules and break policies. What Do You Think? In the first situation, do you think it is unethical for the professor to bend the rules under those circumstances? If you were one of the students failed because of high absenteeism and you found out that the professor didn't fail another student for his high absenteeism, would you think you were being treated unfairly? What would you do? Do you think what the leaders did in the other examples was ethical? Why or why not? In the example with the brother, is it okay to lie in this situation? Do you consider lying as unethical? Are there ever times when lying is better than telling the truth? What are some situations in which bending the rules might be more ethical than following policy?