The friend test is another helpful guideline. Thanks for commenting.

Ford Harding

You’ve developed a nice community of readers here. Here is my 2 cents on this topic:

I think you cross the line when you do something for a client that you wouldn’t be willing to do for a friend with your own personal resources. For example, I might take care of a round of golf for a friend, but I wouldn’t buy him a van. I might pay for a cab ride, but I would never pay for his plane ticket. I wouldn’t be willing to recommend a friend’s kid for a job unless I knew he/she was qualified, but i would not hesitate to give that kid some job leads.

Each person is going to have a different “comfort zone” when it comes to what they would be willing to do for a friend. So the answer will be slightly different for each person.

I think its important to use your firm’s resources as you would your own personal resources (money, info, etc.). Its a good way to stay out of ethical trouble in general.

Obviously, when it comes to public officials you need to be careful. Most agencies make you sign a document stating whether you gave donations or gifts to anyone in a govt. position. So, if your boss signed that document and you are giving gifts…that may lead to some trouble down the line.

Thank you for our comments. Tim’s logic that if it isn’t ethical, you aren’t really helping someone, warrants remembering, though it risks reducing the problem to a tautology. So, we must avoid the trap that if we define something as “help,” it must, therefore, be ethical.

Mark, who has a rare ability for self reflection, reminds us that we all have done something at some time in our lives that fails one of the tests. And some people would fail a choice on the same test that others would pass it. For example, a company asks firms to compete for work, implying an even-handed selection process, but one staffer gives better information to one firm than the others get, because a partner there once helped him out. This firm is able to compete more effectively. This happens every day. The ethicality of it can easily be questioned, but a firm which refuses to take the proferred information in such cases had best be prepared to lose, often.

Ford Harding

When I receive a call from someone looking for a referral, I note that the referral helps two people: the person I refer and the person asking for the referral. Helping “everyone everyday” means that I will provide the person looking for a referral with the best possible referral I know, even if that person is not in my network and will not provide me with personal benefit.

Another example of “help everyone everyday” would be a government employee. If I take them out to lunch above their “limit” I am not helping them. By contrast I am helping them if I can make their job easier by helping them better understand the scope of a project they are about to procure in an effort to help them get competitive bids.

Finally, companies are made of many more people that just the person I am directly helping. If I am to help “everyone everyday” that means that I would not provide help to an individual in an effort to coerce a company into a bad decision for personal or corporate gain.
I am certain that I have oversimplified a rather complicated topic, but perhaps focusing on the original goal of helping others can help guide us to the best decision.

Tim Klabunde
Cofebuz.com

PS – Thanks for the link in this post! We are looking forward to hearing you speak at SMPS DC on Feb 18th!

You all provide good practical examples, which make it clear that small forms of help do not really create a problem, unless you sell to the government. This is reassuring. But it wasn’t long ago that corporate CEO’s took opportunities to get in on IPOs on special terms from I-Bankers who also sought their banking business. These same CEOs would probably felt it improper for a purchasing agent to accept something much less valuable from a vendor.

It is sad, but it’s true, giving and recieving can be overdone in the professions.

Ford Harding

A few years back I engaged a consultant for a small project. After the deal was signed, he sent a nice, modest gift basket. It made me feel really good about him and helped the engagement, in my view. Not only did I never forget that, I have always questioned why I didn’t do something similar each time I signed a new engagement (my wife did as well, she has very good customer-service instincts).

In my last real job, we replaced a Christmas-card tradition with sending Hershey gift assortments to our customers, with a request to “share this with all the people we work with” (one VP took his home nonetheless, and we sent another). Anyway, many many customers said how much they appreciated the gesture.

In each case there wasn’t a quid pro quo. And that’s important. The gifts were modest and after the sales had been closed. A way to cement a relationship, and perhaps building a little good will to buffer against future difficulties.

Also, they recognized that there are humans on both sides of the relationship, and this is perhaps their greatest value.

Great question, no easy answer(s).

It is my practice to not give gifts, period. I do, however, send a thank you card to all involved in a purchasing decision that went my way.

I also will provide a referral, and maybe I am being naive here, but expect nothing is assumed in regard to payment.

If I am out in a social setting i will bluntly ask if I am allowed to pick up the tab. If so, then that’s fine, I’ll do it. If not I thank the person I asked and move forward with the rest of the event.

I think most of the time simple common sense will lead you to the correct decision. The sense iIhope is common is this: If what I want to do be can in any way, shape or form be considered as an attempt at influencing a decision by even the most casual of observers then I shouldn’t do it.

It’s always easier to defend not doing something than trying to justify what you did.

Marty Stockdale
COO
Wireless Logistics, Inc.

Except for a couple of years at the major domestic commercial aircraft manufacturer in the US, my corporate life has been in small business. It is a bit easier here for an insurance broker to deliver a fifth of Crown Royal to the best 40 customers every year for 55 years. And much easier to write a college recommendation for the son of a customer. But would you give a strong job recommendation to a competitor’s son, if a client’s son had applied and was inferior?

The older I get, the more likely I am to throw caution to the wind – maybe that’s why they have pastures…

Many thanks for sharing your thoughts and, especially, the stories. The spouse and newspaper tests are excellent guides for all of us. The stink test is another. I think them hugely helpful, but, as you know, they have their limits.

A client of mine at a big infrastructure engineering firm was put in charge of its California office. He decided to take its biggest clients to lunch to learn how the firm was doing in their eyes. Most were state and local civil servants. The first one he took ordered soup. After the meal was over, when they had talked enough to have a rapport, the guest said, “By the way, you should know that under State law, I’m not allowed to accept anything worth over $x from a vendor, and the soup was the only thing on the menu under that amount.”

Context is important, as you say. For me, soup passes stink, spouse and newspaper tests, but baked Alaska doesn’t. (Maybe I should work for state government..)

Ford Harding