Whose Business Is It Anyway?

“It’s none of our business”, was the reply I heard this afternoon when sharing my concerns about the ethics of a particular business situation.

“It’s none of your business”, I heard a couple of hours later when I voiced my concerns over a situation that was putting a child in danger.

Starting with the second case, it’s not my child; therefore that makes it “none of my business”. This invalid argument would imply that we should all witness parents’ troubling, or even abusive, acts and not react because we are not the parents of those children. How much sense does that make?

In the first case, everything that has to do with my profession is indeed my business. Who do we expect to safeguard the standards of our profession? There is a shared responsibility here and no one can deny that. We join professional bodies, we take oaths, we commit to ethics regulations and we honor all that. It is our business to voice anything unethical that comes to our notice, anything that violates those commitments, anything that harms the reputation of our profession, anything that affects the trust in what we do.

It is our business to watch our politicians, to demand that they perform to the standards for which they have been elected, with accountability, integrity and effectiveness.

It is our business to make sure our children get the education that they deserve.

It is our business to demand that our taxes be spent and invested wisely.

It is our business to protect the environment.

It is our business to expect that our data be protected.

It is our business to tell another customer that he/she is being rude to an employee and vice versa.

I could produce an endless list of the things that are our business, because everything is our business. Things do not just happen. Things are allowed to happen. And while we remain in our “peace bubble” of none-of-my-business, things – bad things – will continue to happen. Unless we speak up.