My wife and I rent space at a storage facility. We were inside
the gate when we saw a woman and her teenage daughter struggling
with the entry code they had written on a piece of paper. They
asked us to open the gate. I wanted to: There seemed no chance
that they were thieves. Plus, they would need a key to get into
any rental space. My wife declined and told them to go phone the
office. Who was right? -- Jeff Zorn, San Francisco
I'm with you. Ethics is not mere rule-following. To do the
right thing requires a real understanding of the circumstances in
which we find ourselves -- to gauge risks, to interpret the
behavior and assess the motives of other people, to ask: What is
going on here? In this, ethics overlaps anthropology. Context
matters.
You reasonably conjectured that the woman and her daughter
were not dangerous. What evil designs could they have had? Wait
until someone shows up and then steal old lawn furniture or
summer clothing or whatever domestic detritus that was squirreled
away? It is not impossible that this duo had bad intentions, but
ordinary befuddlement, forgetting a combination, squinting at
one's own illegible scrawl, is a likelier explanation and a good
basis for deciding to admit them.
It is also noteworthy that neither you nor your wife mention
feeling threatened by this pair -- such unease would be worthy of
consideration; it is prudent to heed your own sense of danger --
only that your wife was a stickler for procedure.
If you had a similar encounter not at a storage center but at
the lobby door of your apartment building, then you would be
right not to admit the keyless, clueless pair. People up to no
good have been known to gain entry in this way and then mug
vulnerable tenants or burgle apartments. So your knowledge of the
world, not unthinking fidelity to the rules, should guide your
actions.
UPDATE: The pair got in later, presumably by calling for the
correct pass code. They did nothing criminal, but Zorn says they
gave him and his wife "a dirty look."
I am an analyst at a consulting firm where, on behalf of a
pharmaceutical company, I worked on a telephone survey of
veterinarians. At first, none would speak with me. Having
recently graduated from a university known for its medical
research, I changed my pitch to "Hi! I am a recent graduate of X
University doing research on animal illness. Is the doctor in?"
This approach got me the responses I needed, but was it ethical?
-- Name Withheld, New York