Day 114 - Ethical Questions, Cultural Differences

image by shinealight, via Flickr 

For a year before I retired from the Department of State, I worked as one of the examiners who observed and assigned scores based on performance in a series of oral assessments by candidates for the U.S. Foreign Service. Each candidate had already scored high enough on the written examination to be invited for the oral assessment. More than 4,000 people take the written exam each year. About 10% score high enough to be invited for the oral assessment. About 25% of those score high enough on the oral assessment for their names to be placed on a register from which candidates are invited to join the Foreign Service. Names remain on the register for 18 months which means only about 35% of the names on the list are offered a position. Competition is tough. And the candidates were equally competitive.

Candidates were scored against 13 dimensions: composure, cultural adaptability, experience and motivation, information integration and analysis, initiative and leadership, judgment, objectivity and integrity, oral communication, planning and organizing, quantitative analysis, resourcefulness.  Several of these dimensions involved questions that presented ethical dilemmas. Our goal, as assessors, was to evaluate how well the candidates responded which involved scores for information integration and analysis, judgment, and objectivity and integrity.

The most revealing questions were those we asked the candidates to describe from their experience a time when they had to make a difficult decision. In those cases, the stories indicated the candidate's definition of difficult as well as what they considered an appropriate response to be.

This story is not one I would use in the oral assessment environment since I don't consider it to be all that difficult a decision. But it illustrates how what is appropriate differs from one culture to another.

I used to take the metro to work. The Foggy Bottom stop was four blocks from my office. It was inevitable that I would encounter friends, colleagues, and acquaintances on the sidewalk between the stop and State Annex 1 where my office was.

One day I found myself behind an acquaintance. I knew where she worked. I knew her name. But she wasn't a colleague or a friend. What caught my attention was that she was wearing a skirt that was very thin. And the label at the back was sticking out at the top. And that tiny label drew my attention so that I then saw, because the skirt was very thin, that she was wearing a thong.

If the label had been sticking out the top of a jacket, a blouse, or a dress, I would have walked a little faster to catch up with her and either told her that the label was sticking out or told her that I would tuck it in for her. But the label was sticking out the top of her skirt. If I walked up to tell her the label was sticking out above her skirt, I would be ignoring the more dramatic issue - her translucent skirt and what else could be seen from behind.

So I decided to mind my own business. I decided that it might be more embarrassing to her to know that her thong could be seen beneath her skirt because she was unlikely to be able to do anything about it. I had never seen slips on sale nearby the office. Alternatively, I considered that perhaps she knew very well that her skirt was nearly translucent and she might consider my telling her about it interference, judgment, being a busy body.

Then I started thinking about how the same situation might be handled in Barbados.  There, since she was not a friend, just an acquaintance, the expectation would be for me to tell her what to do to correct the problem. Tuck in the label in the back of your skirt would take care of part of the problem. But what in that culture should I tell her to correct the translucent skirt? Fix your skirt just doesn't seem specific enough. Go home and change your skirt might not be feasible. Put on a slip might be appropriate, but still not feasible.

Ethical dilemmas make such good stories.