2 Stick to your ethical principles and refuse to fudge the numbers. Tell Kristin you will work overtime to help develop an alternative proposal that stays within the budget by providing more training to employees who work directly with customers and fewer training hours for those who don't have direct customer contact. Sara MacIntosh recently joined MicroPhone, a large telecommunications company, to take over the implementation of a massive customer service training project. The program was created by Kristin Cole, Head of Human Resources and Sara's new boss. According to the grapevine, Kristin was hoping this project alone would give her the 'star quality' she needed to earn a promotion she'd been longing for. Industry competition was heating up, and MicroPhone's strategy called for being the very best at customer service. That meant having the most highly trained people in the industry, especially those who would work directly with customers. Kristin had put together a crash team to develop the new training program, which called for an average of one full week of intense customer service training for each of 3000 people and had a price tag in the neighbourhood of AU$40 million. Kristin's team, made up of several staffers who already felt overwhelmed with their day-to-day workload, rushed to put the proposal together. It was scheduled to go to the board of directors next month.