The president is the head of a corporate organisation. His role starts with the fundamental job responsibilities of a manager. Often, outsiders see only the glamour and perks of office – private jets, a fleet of vehicles, uncountable number of attendants and servants, true or erroneous impressions of unlimited access to cash and considerable influence.
These are some of the reasons postulated for the reluctance of presidents of unlimited liability public companies refusing to relinquish office at the end of their tenure. Perhaps true of governments in many developing countries, but not in the developed world where there are strong institutions.
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US President Harry S. Truman kept an emblem on his desk with the inscription, “The buck stops here.” The phrase refers to the fact that the president has to make the decisions and accept the ultimate responsibility for those decisions. Even when things (of which he knows very little about) done on his behalf backfire, a good chief executive would take responsibility for the actions.
However, one of the greatest challenges that may militate against the discharge of the responsibilities of the president – the chief executive officer (CEO) is conflict of interests, or in normal parlance, divided loyalty. A conflict of interests may arise when one is serving or attempting to serve two or more interests (or interest groups) which aren’t compatible.
For instance, for a chief executive, the company’s interests could be at variance with personal or group interests. A CEO’s first loyalty should be for his company. He should always stand for his company’s interest to the exclusion of any other. Every now and then, a medical doctor is confronted with a situation where he has to take a decision on how to deal with situations involving the confidentiality of a patient’s information.
“Shall I tell the president?” asked the young doctor seeking advice from me. The driver of a CEO of a big company had come to see him because he had had some recent severe visual disturbances while driving. To the doctor’s dismay, he found that the driver had diabetes mellitus which he had kept away from his boss because of the fear of losing his job.
Some days he had no time to eat after taking his medications in the morning before they embarked on long journeys. Thus, he had endured low blood sugar symptoms by eating some cubes of sugar. At times he had to skip taking his drugs completely to avoid the hunger pangs and fainting spells that often came with it on such long journeys.
Occasionally, he managed to disguise the symptoms by pretending to have abdominal cramps or diarrhoea. The fluctuating blood sugar levels had led to fluctuating levels of vision but because he was a very experienced driver he had managed to avoid accidents so far. Now he was in danger of developing irreversible damage to his eyes which could lead to severe irreversible impairment.
“You have sworn an oath of confidentiality and you must not reveal any medical information to anyone without the permission of your patient,” I reminded him.
“But supposing he has an accident and his boss should die, wouldn’t I have this on my conscience?” he asked again.
“It is simple. Impress it on your patient the need to confide in his boss. He should be able to help him,” I advised. “He had blatantly refused to consider this option,” my young colleague replied ruefully. I could feel his pains. I had been in such big dilemma before. “Ask him to see a medical counsellor,” I advised.
The case of the recent deliberate crash of Germanwing Flight 9525 by the co-pilot, in which all 150 people on board died, jolted my memory. I felt for the victims of the mass murder. In my young colleague’s case, he had time to plead with the patient; time to seek my advice and time to seek the intervention of a counsellor to get his patient to disclose the information about his illness to his boss. It wasn’t so for the doctor who treated the co-pilot and gave him leave of absence from work.
The 28-year- old had depression and was incapable of dealing with the urge to take the fatal steps he had taken. He simply tore the paper excusing him from work. Would a simple phone call by his doctor to the president of Germanwing telling him this co-pilot should be excused from duty be a violation of medical confidentiality? The paper was supposed, after all, to end up in his office.
Would you as a patient agree that in cases where public interests override personal interest, facts that may prevent danger to others should be released to the relevant bodies without any liability for a breach of confidentiality?
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This article was previously published in April 2015.
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