Choices

A couple of weeks ago I did a blog post about some things appearing insane from a logical standpoint, and one of the insane things was a guy named Rusty Bowers who stuck by his convictions while undergoing intense pressure to do what he thought was illegal. He said he was pressured to do something that was against the Constitution and against his religious beliefs. So far, so good. However, under further questioning from reporters, he also said that he would still vote in the guy who was trying to pressure him to do something he thought was illegal.

Why would you vote in a guy who tried to make you do what you thought was illegal?

That to me was insane.

It appears he has since very quickly backed off and now says he would not vote in the guy pressuring him to do something unconstitutional. I don’t know what made him stop and say, “Hey, what am I doing? This makes no sense.”

He has made a very hard choice: in the face of his constituents’ anger, he did what he thought was the right thing to do (what maybe most lawyers and thinkers probably think was the right thing to do). He was running for reelection at the time, so it was very dicey to argue against his voters, but he stuck to his guns, probably because he was very close to the “data” or the “action” to inform him of what was going on.

Unfortunately, he lost roughly 30% to 60%. I still think he did the right thing because he was closer to the facts of what was going on compared to the voters. I and the voters are far removed from the situation. At some point, we have to depend on the courts or the audits to pull out the facts. That’s all we can do.

Sometimes, we might have to face that kind of situation at work: you get a lot of pressure to do things that you think are not legal or kosher. So what do you do? Each person has to make their own choice.

In finance, do you adjust your calculations to make a revenue booking to fit your forecast and rationalize why you make that adjustment? Do you try to manage your finance to meet the numbers? Do you do across the board cuts just to meet the shareholder numbers even though the business is otherwise doing well? Do you cut bonuses for the frontline but maintain huge payouts for senior management?

There are hard choices. They are bad choices. There are choices that destroy the company.

Rusty did what he thought was right and can now hold his head high. Can finance say the same?