Can A Person’s Integrity Last On Wall Street?

A discussion took place on a LinkedIn(R) website. It was a request from someone at a financial firm, who was looking to hire employees from a small company that had recently come under SEC scrutiny.

I wondered why the person was looking to hire such employees.

I have found that it’s difficult to keep your integrity strong in a place where your bosses are doing things that are less than ethical – either against the law or against the spirit of the law. I would have thought that all the best employees of that firm were already gone.

I cited a situation I was involved in that I’ve never talked about before. Here it is in my post.

Integrity can be kept, and many of the millions of people in finance have it — but the roundabout to keep it isn’t always easy. I have seen first hand that it’s easier to do what others are doing. And that if you see your company doing something “wrong” — you need to find another firm to work at because getting “sucked into” the wrongness, over time, is more of the norm.

Here is one situation that really caught me off guard many, many years ago.

My boss was insisting that I do something that I felt was wrong. Nothing illegal at the time, but just something so very wrong for me to recommend to the salesman who would then sell this to their clients. I had questions about the swap and questions about the legitimacy of the claims of one of the bonds.

I got away with “not” doing it for a while, but then my boss started clamping down on me. To the point he yelled at me to listen to him and do it.

After contemplating about this situation (actually losing sleep), I asked the Head of the Dept (someone at the firm a long time, but someone I only said “hi” to who had now become the Head Trader) for a transfer to another area of the department. I didn’t say why I wanted the transfer — just that I was ready for a change from what I was doing for retail and wanted instead to work with the sales force.

The next thing I know is that I’m called into the Head Trader’s office. He had spoken to my immediate boss who did not take well to me going over his head. (My boss made up a bunch of c**p about me.) I was told to start looking for a new job.

The very next day, my old Dept Head heard about this and asked me to work for him (same firm, new department, new type of security to sell). Bottom line, a humongous raise.

Wall Street is weird sometimes :)

Do you think that employees can keep their integrity at a small company when those around them are doing wrong?