If you haven’t heard, President Obama was recently televised killing a fly in a news conference. The people of PETA sent the President a humane bug catcher for future “bugging” incidents, so that he need not harm the fly.
The President’s incident reminds me of a recent ethical exoskeletal quandary buzzing on our own backdoor….
Our own Jacob Blass was witness to a fabulous firefly just outside his office window. While it looked like it was dancing “merrily”, closer inspection showed that it was caught in a spider web with the spider looking hungrily on… It was dinner time and the spider had just been called to the table.
Lest we conclude quickly, let’s review the ethics of this situation.... In one corner, there’s the fabulous lightning bug, hero and central character (Eric Carle’s The Very Lonely Firefly, Sesame Street’s Twinkle, Twinkle Little Bug). In the other corner, we have the spider, villainous in all but Spiderman (Carol Diggery Shields’ The Bugliest Bug, Little Miss Muffet).
Who wouldn’t want to save the fabulous firefly? What about the spider, that is hungry and has worked hard to build the web that caught the firefly? Most people I ask this question give one or the other answer, but for all various reasons…. There are almost as many reasons as there are people asked… These all relate to the internal compass people use to guide them.
What would you do? Why would you do it?
Leaving the spider and fly out of the conversation and identifying possible organizational ethical concerns, the above questions are important to discuss as a team. Without these discussions, employees don’t know how and why the organization’s leadership would address such issues. Employees need a compass to know what is acceptable and why… Now is the time to show them the way…