The Young Professional's Survival Guide: From Cab Fares to Moral Snares

by C.K. Gunsalus

Imagine yourself in your new job, doing your best to make a good impression―and your boss asks you to do something that doesn’t feel right, like fudge a sales report, or lie to a customer. You have no idea how to handle the situation, and your boss is hovering. When you’re caught off guard, under pressure from someone more powerful, it’s easy to make a mistake. And having made one, it’s easier to rationalize the next one. The Young Professional’s Survival Guide shows how to avoid these traps in the first place, and how to work through them if you can’t avoid them. Many of the problems that arise in the workplace are predictable. C. K. Gunsalus, a nationally recognized expert on professional ethics, uses short, pungent real-world examples to help people new to the work world recognize the situations that can lead to career-damaging missteps―and prevent them. Gunsalus offers questions to ask yourself (and others) to help you recognize trouble and temptation, sample scripts to use to avoid being pressured into doing something you’ll regret, and guidance in handling disputes fairly and diplomatically. Most of all, she emphasizes, choose your mentors for their characters as well as their titles and talents. You can’t control the people around you, but you can control what you do. Reliance on a few key habits and a professional persona, Gunsalus shows, can help you advance with class, even in what looks like a “casual” workplace.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published November 13, 2012

About the author

" Experienced Academic Administrator

A nationally recognized expert on matters of research integrity, whistleblowing, ethics, and professionalism in academia, C. K. Gunsalus is the Director of the National Center for Professional and Research Ethics, Professor Emerita of Business, and Research Professor at the Coordinated Sciences Laboratory. The centerpiece project of the National Center is a national online ethics resource center funded through a $5M grant from the National Science Foundation for which she is the Principal Investigator. She has been on the faculty of the colleges of Business, Law, and Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and served as Special Counsel in the Office of University Counsel. In the College of Business, she currently teaches Leadership and Ethics in the MBA program and is the director of the required Professional Responsibility course for all undergraduates in the college. She is a member of the faculty of the Medical Humanities/Social Sciences program in the College of Medicine, where she teaches communication, conflict resolution skills and ethics. Her professional interests include professional ethics, with an emphasis on research and organizational ethics, communication and conflict resolution. Her most recent research examines the efficacy of role play and simulations in professional education.

Previously, she served for many years as an Associate Provost, where she was responsible for a range of academic policy and administrative duties, including department head training/support and academic policy interpretations and revision. During that time, she was known as the "department of yucky problems," with duties encompassing oversight of the discrimination and harassment grievance procedure, problem personnel cases and membership on the workplace violence team. Before that, her experience at the University included technology transfer, management of conflicts of interest, human subject protection, and long-term service as the campus Research Standards Officer with responsibility for responding to allegations of professional misconduct by faculty and students.

A licensed attorney, Ms. Gunsalus graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Illinois College of Law and has an AB with Distinction in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She served on the Committee on Research Integrity of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable Ad Hoc Group on Conflict of Interest. She was a member of the United States Commission on Research Integrity and served for four years as chair of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility. In 2004, she was elected a Fellow of the AAAS in recognition of her “sustained contributions to the national debate over improving the practical handling of ethical, legal, professional and administrative issues as they affect scientific research.” She has served on the Illinois Supreme Court’s Commission on Professionalism since 2005. In her spare time, Ms. Gunsalus also served 12 years on the Urbana Board of Education (school board), eight of those years as its President. "

Quoted from http://www.gunsalus.net/

Reviews

[Daniel Te · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a little bit better than other similar books in the genre because it spends most of its time talking about examples, which makes it feel easier to follow and more practical. Each scenario is also described with how certain outcomes can happen given one tactic or another.

The content matter is also not usually taught formally in schools (except for perhaps, business ethics students), but is fairly fundamentally important for actual careers. You could argue that this book really boils down to "don't do anything that seems suspicious unless you're really, really sure that it's okay and you have permission," but the examples help to see that it isn't always so obvious.

The one main criticism I have is that it really tries to downplay the role of emotions in these processes. While you shouldn't go all guns blazing on an emotional whim, playing emotional hardball definitely has its perks (and drawbacks), and fundamentally, much activism is based on people feeling uncomfortable with their current situation and expressing that.

[Roger Smitter · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gunsalus provides a concise and highly practical introduction to ethics on-the-job. His audience is the vast number of business students who enter the work force each year. However, most of what he says informs early career employees and professionals in any field. He engages readers with dozens of brief but realistic case studies that describe situations a new employee is likely to encounter.

His theme is “start where you mean to go”. Ethical behavior emerges from a commitment to be ethical and a set of tools for thinking through decision-making. His final chapter challenges readers to “stay on the high road and end up where you want to be”

[Margo Dill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book is a must for anyone going out into the business world. I LOVE how it provides scenarios and gives advice on what to say when faced with an uncomfortable situation in the workplace. I also think it will make people examine their morals and ethics and think about situations before you find yourself in them!

[Torieqwq · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am no longer a young professional, but I found this to be a well-written guide to ethics and conflicts. The "And Technique" was a lparticularly good reminder of a powerful negotiation tool.

[Areeba · Rating 3 out of 5]

Practical.
Worth your time.
Should be required reading for ANY business ethics course.

[Ekaterina · Rating 2 out of 5]

Book in a few words: don't lie, don't cheat, don't f*ck up.