"Am I old-fashioned to be appalled at the ethics of this, or to think that accepting a gift of a car for booking meetings should be grounds for termination?" Hall asked. "In my view, a meeting planner has an ethical responsibility to book meetings at properties that offer the organization the best fit in terms of price, facility and dates. That judgment should not be colored by personal gain."
Hall's indignation is warranted. While it's understandable that the professionals trying to market a resort want to aggressively promote their product, offering expensive personal gifts smacks of bribing a decision maker to choose based on personal gain rather than what's best for his business.
Granted, companies regularly run contests in which their salespeople compete to win trips or other prizes based on how much they sell within a given time. But in those cases the sales guy isn't asked to make a choice that helps his pocketbook while potentially hurting the company's bottom line.
Some meeting planners might argue that there's nothing wrong with being rewarded for their business since they would choose a resort based only on merit anyway. But the appearance of a conflict would be enough to call their choices into question.
So what's the right thing for a meeting planner to do? Some organizations have ethics codes prohibiting acceptance of such incentives. If there's a policy in place, the choice is clear: no business for gifts.
What about the meeting planner whose company doesn't have a set policy?
Is it fair that he should opt out of the program and not get the points even if the resort gets his business? Should it concern him that, even though he takes the high road, a less scrupulous meeting planner may soon be zipping around in a sporty vehicle after cashing in his points?
How others choose to respond should have no bearing on whether to adopt questionable practices. The resort shouldn't offer such incentives, and the meeting planners shouldn't accept them.
"A car is a lot different than going to lunch with the sales rep or a site visit," Hall wrote. He's right, although some companies have policies about accepting free lunches over a certain value as well.
In any business, an employee has a responsibility not to take advantage of his position to gain personally at the expense of his company. If a meeting planner wants a new car, he should save up and buy one. In the meantime, he should be looking to get the best deal possible for his company.
The grocery's special treatment
A few months ago, I wrote about a woman who wanted to know if it was OK to share her grocery store savings card with the person in front of her if that person had forgotten his. (I wrote that it was better to have the person ask the checkout clerk to look up his own card number.)
Several readers wrote in saying they thought that grocery savings cards, while issued free, were both an invasion of privacy, since the store collects information on shoppers' buying habits, and a backdoor method of inflating prices on goods that were supposedly "on special" only if you used your shopping card.
Are grocery store shopping cards a benign attempt to pass on savings and coupons to shoppers based on their buying habits? Or are they a veiled method for grocery stores to raise their prices and invade your privacy?
Check out these readers' complete responses and other opinions at: http://rightthing.nytsyn.com.
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For the past six years, Jeffrey Seglin has written a monthly ethics column for the New York Times business section. He can be reached at rightthing@nytimes .com.
