Q: My boss left a document on my desk listing the salaries of all the company’s employees. I read only the header, not the contents, then returned it. I felt I did the right thing, but now I’m not so sure. Reading it would have harmed no one, and the information would have helped me negotiate a long overdue raise. But would it have been ethical?
– J.H., San Francisco
A: More than ethical – admirable. I would have read the document, made sure my own salary was listed and circulated it (anonymously – I’m reform-minded, not self-destructive) companywide.
The one who benefits most when such information is suppressed is your boss, not you or your colleagues. It can help an employee know that the person at the next desk makes twice as much money for performing the same task. If salaries are reasonable, employees will understand and accept them. If they are not, secrecy helps only to sustain that injustice.
Transparency is necessary for good governance – why not for good management? It is a wise policy that requires publicly owned companies to disclose certain financial information, including compensation packages offered to many senior executives. In money matters as in many others, knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Thieves are the ones who operate under cover of darkness.
Broadcasting salaries may be sensible and benign, but don’t expect your boss, or your colleagues, or the company’s lawyers, to see it that way. Money is the last bastion of prudery. People who post videos online of themselves having sex blush demurely as they draw the veil over their 1040s. Some are embarrassed because they make more than you might think, others are ashamed because they make less. But while this fiscal priggishness is understandable, you have no moral duty to play along (legal constraints notwithstanding). And don’t be so sure that you are underpaid and due for a raise. If you tear away that veil, you may not like what you see.
Send questions and comments for Randy Cohen to Universal Press Syndicate, 4520 Main St., Kansas City, MO 64111, or ethicist@nytimes.com.
