The Final Episode of “As the Association Turns”: It’s Ethics Awareness Month!
Cecilia Sepp, CAE, ACNP, LPEC
Author’s note: I serve on the ASAE Ethics Committee and as part of our work for Ethics Awareness Month in March, I created a five-part soap opera series for promotion of the Committee’s work. You can find the series in the ASAE Ethics Collaborate community.
The Final Episode -- Episode 5: The Distressed Chief Elected Officer (Board Chair)
Marie Middleton was having a bad morning. Not only had she lost an account with PetSmart to sell her Purrfect Pants for Cats, but it seemed her volunteer leadership role was spiraling out of control.
Between the bullying behavior of Max Mayhem, the ethics violation complaint against Dougie Fitzsimmons (a close personal friend), and Max’s violation of the reimbursement policy, she felt paralyzed. What am I supposed to do? I’m just a pet pants designer, she sighed to herself.
Adding to the pressure, she was annoyed at the way that Max treated the staff, especially Anastasia Anderson, the Chief Staff Executive. Anastasia did excellent work in Marie’s opinion, but she also appreciated how much help she provided Marie in dealing with difficult people – like Max. But now Anastasia was gently pushing Marie to confront Max and resolve the situation.
In their board training sessions, Anastasia always emphasized board member to board member, member to member, and staff to staff. This fell solidly into the “board member to board member” category but Marie still didn’t want to deal with it. Maybe she could ask the Vice Chair, Sally Brown, to help deal with Max. It’s not wrong to delegate to the other officers, right? Marie thought.
But would Sally be willing to take on the issue of dealing with Max? Marie always felt supported by Sally but was she shirking her responsibilities if she asked her to deal with it? On the other hand, Marie thought, this way Sally could take care of this problem before it was a problem during her term as Chair. Or was that just an excuse because Marie didn’t feel brave enough to confront Max?
In reviewing the chain of events that Max instigated, the following things happened:
Max behaved badly at an informal member networking event and likely violated the code of conduct. He made others uncomfortable which led to Dougie being pulled into the situation. This led to:
Dougie being accused of violating the code of conduct by Max. Marie is good friends with Dougie and she doesn’t think he did anything wrong. But this led to:
Sarah Sincere, the Ethics Compliance Committee liaison, feeling uncomfortable about moving a complaint forward to the committee because her personal opinion is that Dougie did nothing wrong. The incident at the networking event led to:
Max harassing Anastasia, the Chief Staff Executive. His bullying is beginning to wear on Anastasia and Marie is afraid that she will find another job. But Anastasia will not get involved in managing Max’s behavior. She is adamant that it is Marie’s responsibility.
The Chief Financial Officer, Bradley Hughes, was intimidated by Max regarding his expense reimbursement. Marie is afraid that Bradley will file a lawsuit against the association for harassment.
Marie is in the middle of a complicated and stressful ethical situation that involves board members, association members, and association staff.
Will Marie finally stand up to Max? Will SOAP be able to go on if Max pulls his company’s membership? Will Sally step in and tell Max off? Or will she tell Marie off??
What would you do in Marie’s place?
Questions, action, inaction, relationship management, ethical decision making – this is what we consider As the Association Turns . . .
