A short video from Harvard Business School Publishing on getting stuck in a lie.

The story references a column I wrote in 2002 for the Sunday New York Times about Sandra Baldwin, the former president of the U.S. Olympic Committee. You can read that column here.

For information about the Harvard Business School Publishing project of which this video is a part, click here.

At minute 5:49 of this video clip, former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker tells Senator Mike Johann in his appearance before the Sentate Banking Committee:

“I tell you sure as I am sitting here, that if banking institutions are protected by the taxpayer and they are given free rein to speculate, I may not live long enough to see the crisis, but my soul is going to come back and haunt you.”

This morning, I spoke with Gene Lavanchy, anchor of Boston’s Fox25 Morning News show, about everyday ethical dilemmas.

He posed questions about moving seats at a sporting event, fantasizing about others when with a partner, reading your children’s e-mail, using labels a charity sends you when you don’t donate, using a restaurant bathroom if you don’t make a purchase at the restaurant, and acting like an illegal play you made in a sporting event didn’t happen if the referee didn’t see it.

We also talked about the ethics quiz based on the article I wrote for Real Simple magazine.

You can view a video clip of the interview by clicking on the YouTube video about or by clicking here.

Image by woodleywonderworks via Flickr

Last week in The New York Times, Natasha Singer reported:

“…McNeil Consumer Healthcare, a division of Johnson & Johnson, announced the recall of several hundred batches of popular over-the-counter medicines, including Benadryl, Motrin, Rolaids, Simply Sleep, St. Joseph Aspirin and Tylenol.

“According to a federal inspection report, the response was anything but swift. The recall came 20 months after McNeil first began receiving consumer complaints about moldy-smelling bottles of Tylenol Arthritis Relief caplets, according to a warning letter sent by the Food and Drug Administrtion to the company on Friday. Since then, a few people have also reported temporary digestive problems like nausea, vomiting, and stomach pain, the agency said.”

Singer went on to write that the news flies in the face of Johnson & Johnson’s now legendary response to the Tylenol tampering in 1982 when it pulled all of its Tylenol product off of the shelf after several deaths had been reported as a result of product tampering.

Singer writes:

“…Johnson & Johnson appeared to abandon its own template, stunning a few business school professors. Its conduct also drew harsh criticism from federal officials.”

It’s not the first time one of Johnson & Johnson’s subsidiaries has behaved in way that casts a pall on the rest of the company and its reputation. In 2001, I reported on an incident involving LifeScan, a unit of Johnson & Johnson that had failed to notify the FDA of a flaw in the software of its LifeScan diagnostic diabetes measurement device.

You can read my column on that incident here.

I ended that column with this observation:

“Precisely because the Tylenol response stands in such contrast, the LifeScan incident raises doubts among Johnson & Johnson’s customers and its employees who expect more of the company — as they should. It also raises expectations that the company will respond swiftly and strongly to ensure that such an event does not happen again. The test lies ahead.”

How Johnson & Johnson responds to this most recent incident further tests the company’s ability to maintain its reputation.

Image via Wikipedia

For the February 2010 issue of Real Simple magazine, I’ve written an “Expertise” column on everyday ethical dilemmas.

On the magazine’s website, there’s an interactive quiz posing ethical challenges you might come across in the course of an average day from yard sales to the office to the bedroom.

You can take the quiz at Everyday Ethics Quiz | Real Simple.