Buy-From-Home is a growing online retailer, selling a range of products from paper clips to luxury watches. The company’s success is largely based on its quality customer service and generous returns policy. Recently, some high-performing customer service employees have complained about being underpaid. Most wrote emails or met with Cecile McBride, Director of HR, to share their grievances. Cecile created a list of complainers and noncomplainers (of all high-performing customer service employees). She handed the list to Joseph Barelli, Buy-From-Home’s compensation analyst, instructing him to determine whether there is a significant pay difference between high-performing complainers and noncomplainers.

After preparing this analysis, Joseph reported that there were no significant pay differences between the two groups. Cecile then asked Joseph to calculate the compa-ratios for all high-performing employees, instructing him to use different midpoint pay rates in his calculations. Joseph was puzzled and asked Cecile to clarify her request: For the complaining high performers, use pay range midpoint rates that were in place when the company began operations several years ago; and, for the noncomplainers, use anticipated midpoints set 5 percent higher than the current midpoint rates. Joseph realized that this approach would lead to substantially higher comparative for the complainers. Soon, these corporations will be used to determine market pay adjustments.

As a compensation professional, what would you do?

What factor(s) in this ethical dilemma might influence a person to make a less-than-ethical decision?