Assessing Ethical Judgment of a Potential Employee

6.15 Assessing Ethical Judgment of a Potential Employee

Cases: 4.8, 5.8 I’m working on updating interview questions for individuals seeking employment

with my agency. I’d like to add an ethics question. Specifically, I’d like a question without a clear-cut “correct” answer. I don’t want the applicants to think we want

a specific answer. Many ethics situations often don’t have clear-cut answers for public administration professionals, but for an applicant, getting the question from an interviewer, they might appear to. I’m interested in how a potential employee reaches a decision, more so than the decision itself. What might be an appropriate question?

Discussion Questions

1. Can the ethical judgment of a potential employee be determined in an interview?

2. Won’t an employee look for the “correct” answer when asked how he would deal with a hypothetical ethical situation?

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Commentary

Larry Cobb, Professor Emeritus, Public Administration, Slippery Rock University, and Executive Director of EthicsWorks:

I would suggest that the interviewer say: “Talk about how you would approach a situation where your supervisor asks you to do something that to your mind is legal, but unethical.”

Terry Rhodes, Vice President for Quality, Curriculum, and Assessment, Association of American Colleges and Universities:

I would suggest that the interviewer ask the candidate to react to the following: “If you were a manager and you had received a verbal acceptance for a position and then the person wished to withdraw for

a better offer elsewhere, what would you do?” I believe that this pro- vides an opportunity for the person to indicate how he or she thinks about things, that is, what they would take into consideration and so forth.

Ann Hess, Staff Director, Boston City Council:

I ask a specific question during the interview process by posing a hypothetical situation. When I interview staff for the city council (one staff, fourteen bosses), I try to gauge an applicant’s understanding of the need to be confidential while respecting divergent interests across bosses.

Th e hypothetical situation goes like this: You, as a central staff member, are asked to compile some research for one councilor. Another councilor comes to you with a request for information on the same issue, but the councilor has a different position on the issue. Part I: How do you comply with each person’s request? Part II: The first coun- cilor comes back to you and asks who else is working on the issue and what else have you produced for them. What do you say?

I usually give the applicant five minutes to draft some informal com- ments and responses and then we talk about it. I look for how they come to the decision—while there is no specific right answer, better candi- dates will discuss wanting to know level of confidentiality in advance, providing both sides of the story to both councilors with focus on the particular position they are advocating, the inability to disclose who else they are doing research for, and how they present that fact to the requesting councilor with respect and understanding. It covers a lot of ground.

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Sam Halter, (former) City Administrator, Tampa, Florida and ICMA Range Rider:

Public administrators are frequently confronted with tough ethical issues. One approach is to ask: “Please describe an ethical issue you have had to address in your career and the way you handled it. If con- fronted with the same issue today, would you handle it in the same way?”

Mary Jane Kuffner Hirt, Professor of Political Science, Indiana University of Pennsylvania:

You are the assistant manager in a community and have just been informed by a council member that council intended to fire the town manager at the next public meeting. The council member asked whether you are interested in being considered for the manager’s position. What is your response to the council member? Do you warn the manager that

he or she is about to be fired? Jody L. Harris, Director of Program Services, State Planning Office, Executive

Department, State of Maine:

A technique called competency-based interviewing or behavioral event interviewing helps assess professional qualities important to job suc- cess. A competency is something that goes beyond technical job skill or education. It focuses on a behavior, attitude, or leadership skill, such as vision or creativity, problem solving, or judgment. It focuses on the actual behavior of a candidate rather than on a hypothetical situation. It requires more time. You might, for example, spend fifteen to twenty minutes on a single question.

Th e questions ask the candidate to describe what they actually did that demonstrates the competency or behavior for which you are look- ing. For example, to assess integrity or ethical judgment, you might ask, “Tell me about a time when a policy decision was made that conflicted with your personal beliefs and ethics. How did you resolve it?”

Th e questions should be broad so as to give the candidate room to fi nd a situation in their experience where they demonstrated the com- petency. It is important that the candidate select their own incident or story (no leading by the interviewer). Key is to get the person to describe what they actually did, said, thought, and felt. If they say, “We did something …” ask them, “What did you do specifically?” There are lots of resources on the technique.

Competency-based interviewing requires skill and practice and, of course, the competencies or behaviors you interview for must be related

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to the job to be performed. But the research says you get better can- didates and the candidates who are not selected are more satisfied that

the process was fair.