Friends... such a difficult thing

I've posted a lot in the past about the uncomfortable situation of having to dump a FB or LinkedIn connection. It happens, and it's very uncomfortable.... and so my policy has been not to friend people I don't actually know pretty well. After use-testing - I've broadened that policy to be:

I don't friend people unless I know and like them well enough to want to meet them for coffee.

Just yesterday, someone from my high school sent me a FB friend request. I graduated in a very small class from a very small school. Strangely though, I do not know this person. I searched my brain... but I just don't know him. So I sent him a note asking him if he might help me remember who he was. I feel like that move (not my note) was pretty bitchy.

The online world needs an etiquette manual.

Off Topic: My MBA Course Has No Ethics

It's back to school time for me. And that means, posts about school for you!

This semester (which is our final one) we have a course entitled "Business Law and Ethics." However, yesterday our prof told us that we would have only one class in which we talked about ethics, but he didn't think that "ethics is a thing that can be taught" so we wouldn't go into it in depth.

I'm still really troubled that this program thinks like that. If you can't teach ethics, then how will people learn? If you can't teach ethics, why do so many top-tier business schools make it a core course? And finally, if you don't even make an effort, are you contributing to the problem?

I think so, yes. I think that just by *saying* that you can't teach ethics, and glossing over it like my prof did yesterday, it trivializes the topic. Ethics are an ENORMOUS issue in today's business environment... I don't even need to cite examples, we all know of dozens.

People just don't spend time thinking about where they stand and what they will do when presented with a sticky problem. Nor do they have a safe place (like an academic setting) to discuss scenarios and implications.

I keep thinking about that guy in my class and his famous line, "If it's legal, it must be ethical."
Leaving ethics out of our course is a real disservice to us, and our business world. And that's what I think about that.