For as
long as I remember, a distinction has been drawn between one’s private life and
one’s professional life. Growing up, both my parents worked long hours every
day as managers of the same company. Of course there were some instances where
they were required to work together on projects, where they disagreed over
certain actions or decisions made at work, where we went to company outings and
picnics, and where certain employees became family friends, but for the most
part, despite their work engaging a large portion of their time and attention,
at home their attention was focused entirely on family matters and work stayed a
separate entity. While the standard seems to be this—to leave home life at home
and work life at work—sometimes the line between the two seems to blur.
Why is
it so important that these two—work and home— stay separate from each other? One
reason is to keep the pressures and tensions of each from interfering from the
efficiency and effectiveness of decisions and actions made in the other. For
some people, home serves as a sanctuary from the problems and stress that arise
at work; the comfort of a loving and nurturing environment is a diversion from the
struggles of being a working person. For others, it is the reverse; the home
life is taxing and demanding or abusive, while work, acting on a task-oriented
basis, allows them both a physical and mental escape from such an emotionally
draining environment. While this provides an emotional explanation for this
social standard, there is a more legal and ethically-oriented reason for its
development.
Human
nature drives us to be the best, to reach for the stars, to look for
advantages. While in life, this is an ideal philosophy, in the professional
world to some degree, to do so is taboo. As in the case of Martha Stewart,
insider trading is an illegal practice. Insider trading is trading which occurs
when the individual has access to company information outside the public domain,
which is not accessible to other investors. Because other investors do not have
access to such information, it gives those with it an unfair advantage over
them and thus is illegal in many countries, including the United States. In
this case, investors who have some sort of relation with someone within the company,
an insider, are taking a relationship which exists within the private sphere
and using it to them to benefit themselves in the professional sphere. These
actions break the unwritten social standard of maintaining separate private and
professional spheres, and in doing so break ethical and legal written
standards, thus showing that often social standards can reflect standards which
exist within other frames of reference.
While maintain
separate spheres is a common practice, it is of course impossible to keep them
completely apart. Some private relationships will seep into the professional
life; people will use connections to get better jobs, promotions, benefits, which
already create a gray area in professional ethics, but to use connections to
directly profit, such as to win awards or contests is to break all sorts of
moral and ethical codes.
I break this up in regards to the
current controversy surrounding a sex scandal involving a game developer, her
relations, and her professional endeavors. A friend has spent the past few
weeks ranting to me about the lack of journalistic integrity and ethics that
this case has brought up. Beyond the cheating the woman has done on her
romantic partner, lies an arguably more severe case of cheating in a
professional sense. Previously, the female game developer had won an award for
a game she had developed. When this case broke out, however, it was revealed
that one of the trustees on the board which awarded her game had been one of
her sexual partners.
This blatant fusion of her private
and professional life brings forth the question of whether she had won the
award fairly. Had her private relationship with the man tampered with his judgment
and decision on the award? While we may never get a definite answer to this
question, it makes us aware of the problems that mixing private and
professional lives bring about. It blurs an ethical line, because even when we
try to keep neutral on our decisions, often our emotions and the way we feel
about things and people affect our rational decisions, which is why the
standard is to keep the different parts of our lives separate; simply because
it is easier to be unbiased that way.
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