The Ethical Dilemmas of the Workers in the Banking Industry

Banking industry is associated with money-making. Many people believe that banks only exist to accumulate wealth. They lend out money where in turn they collect interest, and on the other hand they invest money from which they also obtain profit. Even though banks are for- profit institutions, this still means that ethical codes and guidelines are crucial in every day transactions. Employees in this industry are facing ethical dilemmas regarding confidentiality, responsibility, conflict of interest, whistleblowing and relationship with the coworkers.

It is not enough to just be familiar with the ethical issues. In addition, it is important to be able to recognize them before they even occur and resolve them as soon as possible. Trust and privacy is what banks are build upon. Just like patients trust doctors not to reveal their medical history, clients trust banks not to disclose their financial information.

However, in some instances, banks may be required by law to release this information. This can happen if there is an investigation brought upon a bank’s client who obtained funds by engaging in illegal activities.

Then, it is in the best interest of society for this information to be released to courts. In all other instances, bank employees are not allowed to discuss anyone’s financial information, it may seem that bankers do not have incentives to release client’s financial information, but exploring this in greater detail, it can be seen that this dilemma is faced more often than not. First there may be some personal incentives, such as disclosing this information to a friend about their’s boyfriend banking account.

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While this may not result in a harm to either parties it is still ethically wrong. That client trusted the bank that his financial information is between him and the bank.

It is equivalent spreading an important secret to all other friends While it may not cause direct harm a trust is broken and that client, if he finds out, will no longer do business with that bank and as a result a banker can get fired. Breaking the confidentially code in the banking field can result in a permanent loss ofjob in that profession. Another incentive may be to “sell” this information to market research companies. In today’s world it is mind blowing how marketers obtain information about people, in order to better sell them the products. Bankers may be asked to reveal client’s information to a third party in exchange for money. Marketers can use this information to gain a better understanding as to what financial bracket they belong to, and according to that sell them products. It must be pointed out that a banker doesn’t necessarily need to reveal all the information, after all bankers have access to social securities numbers and all kinds of other important information that scammers can use to take advantage. Thus, revealing even a small detail about someone can result in a devastating loss to that client.

Professionals in the banking field are the face of the company. Their actions are often not separated from the actions performed by the banking institution. Thus it is employees’ responsibility to perform business activities in the ethical manner and do what’s right. Many professionals especially in the management positions are empowered to act on the behave of the company. Thus, these people must have strong ethical guidelines because they are also role models for other employees. In the professional field there are various responsibilities that people face and they are accountable for such as: reporting of billable hours, conflict of interest and whistleblowing. Billable Hours Some jobs, even at entry-levels require little supervision. Although, an unethical lawyer who bills his client more than the time he actually work on the case, is at one of the top positions in the law firm, billable hours issue arises in all professions. Most people work on salaries and aren’t supervised every minute.

Thus, the employer trusts the employee to complete the project withing the agreed time limit. An ethical dilemma arises as to what the employee is to do if he finishes the project earlierr. Most people today have connection to the internet in their office, and employees accessing pages that are unrelated to their work has become a serious issue in the business world. Thus, it is not ethical to complete the work and then wait around and do nothing. Employee is still on the payroll and should go to the supervisor and ask for more work. It is unethical to receive full compensation without doing job related activities during office hours. It is very easy to simply sit around and wait for a project to come, however since the promise is made to the employer to work during the designated hours it is cheating to sit around without work and receive compensation. Billing issues also arises with mortgage lenders and other professionals in the bank where traveling is part of the job.

It is expected from them to properly report the amount of miles driven, so that they are fairly compensated Reporting incorrectly, will not necessarily hurt the bank financially but that doesn‘t mean it is justifiable to do. The dilemma is that the bank will most likely not double check on the hours you worked on a project or the miles driven, because they have already estimated the acceptable costs. However, just because it is easy to get away with writing extra mile or pretend to work, this doesn‘t mean it is ethical. The employer places an important trust on the employees and they must be honest to each other. Conflict of Interest Part of the responsibility is to do what is right from the stand point of the moral compass. The second responsibility is to the company, In the banking industry there are obligations to a customer, employees and the society.

Sometimes the line dividing these obligations is thin Looking at an example where a banker has a quota and must sell X amount of credit cards a month. The banker might not believe in the credit card himself because he knows that it has numerous hidden fees that he was told not to expose. Who does the banker have a responsibility to? If he doesn’t make the quota he can loose the job but if he sells the card he is, in a sense defrauding the customer. Ethical dilemmas such as this arise way too often. Obviously the banker is to tell the customer about the fees that this card can bring but by doing so he is risking his job. This is a classic example of conflict of interest. Finding out who you have an obligation to is the key. Nonetheless, many bankers may chose not to disclose all the information to the customer and keep the job. In order to prevent ethical dilemmas such as this many laws, specifically pertaining to credit cards have been put in place.

However, this isn’t enough. Employer must provide employees with guidelines how to deal properly in situation in which there is no law to protect the consumers, In that scenario the bank must protect its clients and employees. Conflict of interest is one of the most common ethical issues in a professional field and everyone must be on a lookout to best protect all the parties involved, Whistleblowt’ng Many professionals are protected if they engage in whistleblowing by the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA). The dilemma is whether the employees should report issues to the OSHA agency, it may happen that the business will get shut down and that the workers will lose theirjobs. So, it sometimes happens that employees do not report the problems because they need to keep theirjobs to pay bills. Whistleblowing is when the individual employee actually reports concerns over safety to OSHA. However, the result may be that the employee would get fired. While OSHA can protect the employee from retaliation, the employees are still scared that this will simply not be enough, and a lot of safety issues never get reported.

Whistleblowing can coincide with conflict of interest. On one side professionals should always do what is morally right, but on the other side they can risk theirjobs. No individual can resolve this on their own, It depends on each person to weight out the advantages and disadvantages. In the banking industry a person should report any suspicious activity. Investigation of any activity early enough can prevent many consequences and can be corrected, before the entire business suffers. Thus, it is much better if a bank allows employees to freely express their concerns to the management without punishment and in privacy before the entire incident escalates to nation known whistleblowing scandal, from which it is hard to recover. Other words, banks and other professions should allow and in fact encourage employees to report anything that they might find suspicious and out of the ordinary.

In the medial field doctors often disagree as to what is the best treatment for a patient, In the research field disagreement can lead to amazing discoveries because other people provide different views. In many other professions group work is encouraged because it can lead to better results. The concerning issue is who gets the credit when working on a project together. It must be pointed out thatjust because someone was a group leader, or a supervisor it is ethically wrong to take all the credit. Other coworkers contributed to the project no matter the type and amount of work performed, thus they deserve some recognition, It isn’t sufficient to simply assume that recognition is person receiving compensation in the form of salary.

If a paper is written, or something new developed that benefits the company all the coworkers deserve some mention either written or simply given credit orally when presenting the project. Everyone in the professional field must be aware of the potential ethical implication that their actions may have, on both their clients, employer and the society. While it is impossible to create a set of rules that will provide guidelines for every single situation that may arise with a profession, individual person’s moral compass is always a good reference, It is isn’t enough for the company to state what is ethical or not, companies have other goals in mind, such as the most common to make money, it is up to an individual to screen and act according to own set of beliefs and standards. Indeed, it is ideal if the individual’s moral standards are higher or equal to that of the company’s expectation. It is professionals’ duty to do what is best for the company, of course within the ethical and legal limits.

Good professional, when the issues of responsibility, confidentiality and conflicts arise will act in way to protect the company as if it were its own. The above mentioned ethical issues are important for the future career in banking. However individual ethical guidelines arising in the banking field will take time to create. It is hard to hypothesize what would one do in a given situation. Unfortunately, people learn from mistakes, from good and bad experiences. Thus, while it is essential that each individual in the banking career has some moral guidance, it can be expected that a good professional will develop more and more skills and make better ethical decisions as the time passes.