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As geoff-h @ MTL.FERIC.CA said on 04/11/96 at 01:29:08 PM re. Bending rules:
> I think we've somewhat misinterpreted the original posting,
here. "Bending the rules" doesn't necessarily have anything
to do with breaking laws, ethical or legal; what I
understood was that (for example) if there's a five-step
process to achieving a particular goal, you may have to
skip one or two steps under time or resource pressures.<
I'm not sure it's a misinterpretation -- the original post did not specify that
the "rules" mentioned were simply the necessity of skipping one or two steps
along the way to a particular goal.
>In editing, we call this "levels of edit", and yes, it can
compromise quality; in emergency medicine, they call it
triage. You learn to live with it. The goal is to do the
best you can on behalf of your audience, and to do better
next time.<
Agreed, to an extent. But if steps are left out of the process without telling
those managing or paying for the process, or (worse) the "triage" decision
leads to something that harms the customer, "bending the rules" in that way has
indeed violated ethical principles, and may also have violated one or more
explicit, legal codes.
JFOA.
David Jones, Technical Writer
David_Jones/KSBEISD -dot- KSBEISD -at- Datahub -dot- com
Kamehameha Schools Bishop Estate
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