(Part 9 of the University of Hertfordshire Tech Ethics Course. << Part 8)
Lean In
One of my favourite bosses over the years only ever had one piece of advice for me, “Put a tin hat on!” What he meant was I had to defend what I knew to be right even in the face of opposition.
This doesn’t mean shouting. Although to be fair, I think he meant shouting - he was of a different generation. In fact, yelling is counterproductive particularly if you’re a woman or junior person. It makes you look unstable. What fighting your corner often means in practice is you need to be persistent and try some persuasion.
The soft skills to ensure the right thing happens are a fundamental part of being a professional. It doesn’t matter if you realise something’s against the law or might harm your users and you feel bad about it, if you go ahead and do it anyway. Perhaps because you couldn’t convince your team not to or, worse, you thought you wouldn’t be able to persuade them, so didn’t try.
How Can You Convince People?
There is plenty of material online about how to make a potentially tough sell. In her book “Lean In”, Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, describes her method for getting things done as being, “relentlessly pleasant”. Note there are two parts to this: being relentless (i.e. persistent), and being nice about it. Her advice is for women, but I'd direct it at anyone who isn't built like a Marvel superhero.
UK psychology company MindGym points out you need to keep your goal in mind at all times and, first and foremost, set out your rationale. Your emotions need to be held back until after that.
What does that mean in practice? Keeping calm and giving yourself time to think and prepare.
When it comes to defending an ethical or professional issue, step back. Take a breath. Make yourself a cup of tea. What is it you want to achieve?
- To stop your product breaking the law?
- To stop your product from potentially harming users?
- To stop your product breaking norms for best practice, such as being insufficiently secure or tested.
- To stop your products and your company looking bad on TV or the front page of the Daily Mail?
Keep that in mind throughout!
Communication is 90% preparation. Consider your argument for why a bad thing might happen because of what your team is currently doing. Write your rationale down as bullet points. Leave it a few hours then reread it. Ideally, ask someone else to read it and give you feedback.
If possible, identify a professional authority that backs up your argument.
- The best is the law. Is there a risk of breaking it from what you are doing? Then say that in your argument. This includes duty of care to employees, customers, and users. What about GDPR, equalities act, HR rules?
- The next most effective authority is your business’ contracts. Are you at risk of breaking contractual service level agreements (SLAs)?
- The third best is your marketing team. Would they agree there’s a risk of looking bad and losing business?
- The fourth best is an ethical and professional framework such as the ACM code of professional ethics. Point out that infringing professional standards looks bad from a customer or recruitment perspective.
How to Present
Ideally, you will get the key people you need to persuade to individually agree to your argument in advance. Convincing a whole group to change their collective mind is far harder than convincing a set of individuals. Tackling them one by one will take longer, but it should pay off.
Try to schedule a 1-1 meeting or, even better, an informal chat/coffee with each to discuss the issue. What should you say? See below for tips on persuasion techniques.
What If You Are Not Completely Sure if It’s Wrong?
It might seem the only way to convince someone to change course is if you can give them a cast iron reasoned argument, which you are 100% certain of.
However, that doesn’t always help as much as you’d think. Often, even if you are personally certain, it’s useful to suggest you aren’t sure something is wrong. That can be an excellent way to deploy one of the most effective persuasive techniques: flattery + asking for help.
Ask!
One of the most effective forms of persuasion is to genuinely ask for help.
- “I’m worried this might break the law in this way. What do you think?”
- “I think there’s a risk there might be a security hole here, but I’m not sure what to do about it. What would you do?”
- “I can see downsides to this but perhaps I don’t fully understand it. What do you think?”
Playing the dummy card can be a helpful way to get folk involved in the argument on your side. Of course, their knee jerk response may be, “It's all fine!” You need them to put a bit more thinking into it than that. You might need to be persistent in pointing out why you think there’s an issue. Keep calm, keep smiling and keep on.
For a junior person, it is more effective to combine a light touch with persistence than to go in all guns blazing. Avoid an explosive denouement because you’ll probably lose. Let your idea sink in for a range of people. Don’t put them on the defensive by being too aggressive. Highlight where you agree with them.
Make sure you thank them profusely even if they just tell you something you already know. Remember: relentless and pleasant.
A Bit of Flattery Seldom Goes Amiss
Don’t overdo it, but do it. A subtle compliment is a good precursor to asking.
- “I know you’re an expert in this area, and I was wondering if I could ask your opinion?”
- “You’ve had more experience with this kind of thing than me, so...”
This can often be combined with inspiring them with a version of themselves they then want to live up to. Don't lie. Be truthful and positive.
- “I know you are a highly professional person and I trust your judgment. What do you think we should do?”
- “You’re someone who takes ethical stands. What do you think we should do here?”
Sacrifice the Credit
It’s amazing what you can achieve if you don’t take the credit. Do you want to be right, be seen to be right, or want the right thing to happen?
You may need to sacrifice the limelight to the other people you roped in to help. The payoff for them is they’ll feel like good people and they get the plaudits. The payoff to you is you get the result.
Buy Yourself Time
Everything above takes time. Persuasion isn’t quick and you need to make sure you have enough time to do it.
In the heat of the moment, it’s very easy to say a panicked “yes” to something you suspect is wrong. You need a way to avoid reflexive agreement. Give yourself at least a few hours to think things through.
An exercise I used to use with engineers new to consulting with customers was to prepare a list of “stalling lines” with them. They were instructed to say them if a customer (or their boss!) asked them something they didn’t know the answer to or to do something they felt might be wrong. The idea was to give them time to think it through or consult with someone else before they committed to something that might be a mistake. For example:
- “That is an excellent question. Hopefully, I can do that but I have something I need to check first. Can I get back to you tomorrow?”
- “Great idea! Let me look into that and I’ll let you have a definitive answer by close of business.”
Prepare some default “stall lines” for yourself. Make them positive. They are incredibly useful. Once you’ve bought yourself time you can think through your argument or talk it over with someone.
Make sure you always have something to say rather than just squeaking, “Yes!”
Courageous Conversations
It’s a useful rule of thumb that if there is a conversation you don’t want to have, it’s the conversation you should be having. Be courageous. It’s usually a heck of a lot easier than you expected and a huge weight off your shoulders.
And remember Sheryl Sandberg’s advice. Don’t yell. Be relentlessly pleasant.
Is it Easier When You’re the Boss?
Yes and no. If you order people to do things “or else” you’ll usually get a shoddy outcome or none at all.
As you progress in your career, persistence, reason, asking for help, judicious flattery, and not hogging all the credit are often still the best tools in your toolbox.
But That’s Not How My Boss Does It!
Some people don’t persuade. They order. That might be from a position of organisational authority (subtext “do it or you're fired”). Tall or physically powerful people often issue commands as well. Some folk use their natural aggression to do it. If you only give orders, you’ve probably been doing so since childhood and teachers may even have described you as a leader. You probably are. A bad one.
Orders don’t require or encourage thought, reason, or collaboration and they're not the only way to influence events. If you want to change the status quo, but you don’t have the power to issue orders, don’t panic. You can do it. It’ll take longer and be more effort, but the result will be far, far better.
