Q: I’m employed at a company that does mostly federal contracting as well as work for foreign clients. I have participated in a few projects for these international clients, and the director and project leads for those clients are happy with my work and my particular skill set, which not many people have. My company is having trouble with declining federal budgets, so staying in this director’s good graces might protect me if there are layoffs.
Last year, we did work for a country that has since been widely criticized for human rights violations. This country’s government has recently done things that are, to many people, unconscionable. I’m one of those people. I’m horrified by what this country’s government is doing.
A member of this client’s government is coming to the U.S. later this year, and everyone on the team is expected to meet with and possibly brief him on last year’s project. I can’t do this in good conscience. The idea of blithely briefing a member of this country’s government as if everything is fine makes me sick to my stomach.
But I don’t know how to tell the project lead that I will not be participating. Should I email? Meet in person? What wording should I use? I don’t know how the project lead would react, although I suspect he’s more sympathetic to the country’s government. I’m not worried about getting fired, but I don’t want to burn this bridge. I like the work — I just can’t keep doing work for this client. What should I say?
A: Assuming you have autonomy to accept or decline these requests, here’s how I’d handle the debrief:
“I’m afraid I have a conflict and can’t make the meeting. Here is a prepared summary of the work I performed last year.” No need to elaborate on the nature of your conflict.
If you don’t have that autonomy, try to find out more about your employer’s policy on these kinds of conflicts. Do they expect employees to be able to separate personal objections from business goals, or do they want employees to be up front about potential conflicts to avoid compromising deliverables? If your employee handbook has nothing, ask for a private meeting with HR or a trusted manager to discuss your situation in hypothetical terms: “If I have a personal moral objection to working with a particular client, how would you recommend I handle it? Is there a protocol for recusing myself?”
If your conflict is due to religious beliefs, an employment lawyer could tell you whether you have legal protection. Otherwise, unfortunately, the protocol may involve your finding another employer.
For what it’s worth, I don’t see delivering a summary of work you have already performed as endorsing the client’s latest actions. What’s done is done.
The real question is what you will do if you’re asked to support future contracts for this newly problematic client. Refuse? Quit? Accept the work and donate your earnings or off-the-clock time for an organization working to mitigate the harms of that government? Become a whistleblower? Take the job because it’s work you are being paid to do?
At its heart, your question is a conundrum many face: The desire to do right vs. the need to be employed.
Not to veer into moral equivalence, but at some level, every human government — including the one you perform most of your work for — operates under a national charter stained with blood. I’m not saying: “All nations are compromised, so why bother with principles?” I’m pointing out that the representative you’re being asked to meet with may be no less conflicted about their government’s actions than you are about yours — and no more culpable for those actions.
And here is some more unsavory food for thought: There is no way of fully knowing how the work you do for clients is being used — the humans it’s harming, the bad actors it’s enriching, the brutal policies it’s being used to justify. For most of us, the impact of our work is so far removed from the buttons we punch that we have the luxury of not thinking about it. But we are all complicit in atrocities against other humans at some level, from the foods we eat to the clothes we buy and the technology we use. The best we can do as individuals is act with good intentions, be mindful about our impact, and do better once we’ve learned better.