Ethical dilemmas for communications professionals

I need you! Okay I really just need your ethical dilemmas. I am participating in a panel Monday morning at ASU’s Walter Cronkite School Of Journalism. Rather informal I heard, just Valley professionals providing students perspective as to the types of challenges they might face as future communications professionals.

This opportunity made me curious to situations colleagues have dealt with recently.

Have you pitched a product you didn’t believe in?
Been assigned a retainer client you supported professionally but not personally?
Did your editor or producer assign you a story you just didn’t feel was news, but the dollars of a high paying advertiser clouded their judgment?

Inappropriate situation between supervisors and junior staff make the news every day (and keep crisis PR professionals in business), but what about all of that in between stuff - the office flirting and banter that goes on. Does an afterhours happy hour or weekend event change the “rules” for some of your colleagues?

In the nine years I’ve worked this market I’ve definitely been faced with a few ethical dilemmas - but typically it was trying to determine how my personal values could align with a specific duty or client I needed to support professionally. I expect the panel will provide different strategies when determining personal codes of ethics, but I wonder what the student’s reaction will be – curious if they’ll even bat an eye at my experiences. The world has definitely hardened since I sat in their seat a decade ago. Perhaps the moral dilemmas they face as students will be the ones to enlighten.

About the Author: Heather Miles Austin

Public relations manager with more than a decade of media, events and strategic marketing experience. Extreme sports lover, rabid rec soccer player and doting aunt.

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