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Case Studies in Professional Writing Ethics: A Little Programming Company

Job Environment

This company consisted of three programmers who mainly wrote customized accounting and inventory programs for small businesses. The company had split off from another company that I had done some computer consulting for in the past. They called me looking for someone who knew something about HTML and could help write a business proposal for them. The idea was that I would write the proposal and if they got the contract, I would serve as the lead writer and help with the programming.

The proposal was a response to an RFP put out by a local newspaper. They were going to put their newspaper online, and they were looking for a company to handle all of the web pages for their advertisers. This was 1993, when most people were just discovering the web. I had already been running my web site for a few months, but no one else at the company that brought me in had ever written a line of HTML. I had worked with these programmers before, and I knew that they were competent, though not brilliant. I felt they could learn what they needed to know for the job, but I was disappointed none of them had bothered to learn anything beforehand.

Situation Three: Questionable Claims

Because of their lack of web experience, I had doubts about their salability in a business proposal. For a short time, I considered submitting a proposal on my own, but I felt that was unfair because I wouldn’t have known about the RFP if they hadn’t brought me in.
I still had to come up with a proposal that made my group appear to be the ideal candidate for the job, but in my opinion, our qualifications were slim compared to some of the others who might be competing for the contract.

To me the dilemma was whether to “exaggerate” our experience or try to work around that shortcoming.

My Choice

I chose not to play up the company’s experience. Instead, I worked very hard to create as detailed a proposal as possible. The proposal focused on what we would do for them, rather than what we had done in the past. I mapped out a strategy for creating a series of ads that complemented the style of the newspaper, but took advantage of the web’s lack of size constraints. I thought it was a quality proposal, but I was always uncomfortable about having to avoid a discussion of our experience.

The Results

We didn’t get the contract. In truth, no one did. Instead, the company decided to delay implementation of the advertiser section while they hired their own people and got them up to speed. I kept a close eye on their advertising pages, and the pages never did live up to the idea I had mapped out for them. Most of the ads were poorly designed. They looked like most web pages of the time, visually uninteresting and slightly crude. While I cannot say for sure that we would have done a better job, I believe our design plan was much better.

About a year later, the newspaper called me back and asked if I would be interested in interviewing for a job doing web work for them. This would have been for the news department rather than in advertising. I agreed to interview for it and I was offered the job, although I never took it because the same day I was offered a much higher paying technical writing contract at another company.

Utilitarian Assessment

Measuring my choice from the standpoint of the greatest good for the greatest number of people, I have to say that my choice did not hold up as well as I would have liked. I had three other people relying on me to get the contract, and while I cannot guarantee we would have gotten the contract if I had exaggerated our experience, I know we did not get the contact the way I presented it. I also know that we could have designed better online ads than the ones that appeared on their web site.

Virtue/Honor Assessment

Does this action attempt to deceive anyone or allow anyone to be deceived?
Exaggerating our experience would have been deceptive. As it was, no one was deceived. It is possible that by not discussing our experience, we allowed the newspaper to be deceived.

Does this action gain or allow the gain of a privilege or advantage to which I or someone else would not otherwise be entitled?
If we had gotten the project under false pretenses, we would have gained something that were were not necessarily entitled to. As it was, we got nothing.

Would I be satisfied by the outcome if I were on the receiving end of this action?
I do believe we could have lived up to the proposed plan either way. HTML programming is not that hard, and my design skills were certainly better than those of the people who produced the eventual online ads.

Lessons Learned

I believe I would stick to the same choices if I had to do the job over again. There is no guarantee that a different approach would have been more effective. Were I to do it over, I might choose to be more honest with the programmers about what I thought their chances were.