Good post, Timur.
By the way, this gives me the feeling that the leaker’s intention was only to leak speculation related to the UAE Horizon request for proposal to HS, but they also accidentally leaked other clients’ secrets, or at least the names of clients that are illegal to leak (perhaps operators in the security sector).
Hi!
Just for the sake of clarity, I’m asking again, when you write
do you mean that no one has been of the opinion that business could not be done in the United Arab Emirates at all?
I read the HS article as saying that at least one of those mentioned has been of the opinion that in this specific case, business should not be done in the UAE. But you probably meant the former?
The HS article shows the Conclusion section of the Ethics Desk report (mostly):
Recommendation: no-go
Ethics Desks recommends that Gofore shoud not join the project.
I have no knowledge of secrets or names of other customers or prospects having been leaked. It is hard to imagine what those could even be, since we have no operations in the region.
In our company, a policy has occasionally been outlined, likely by the Ethics Desk, that projects can be considered pretty much anywhere. Individual projects are then examined based on their impact—specifically, whether our involvement has a positive or negative effect.
This has also been followed in this case, and as Mikael’s text snippets show, this was further confirmed in a joint meeting between management and the ethics committee.
In the same meeting, it was also mutually agreed that it’s worth continuing the process to gather more information. And that the ethical review will be refined at a later stage in light of the additional information received.
The lower screenshot does indeed show that the Desk provided instructions on how to proceed if the process is continued. And that is exactly what has been done here. However, some text snippet had been placed over that section in the illustration, so it’s easily missed.
Yep. I was just asking for a clarification on the wording, as at first glance it seemed to me like you were trying to argue that black is white—meaning, claiming something that the Hesari (Helsingin Sanomat) screenshot proves wrong (“that no one opposes this business”). Perhaps others besides me misinterpreted your original text, so a clarification would have been appropriate. You didn’t directly address this, but instead described other factors as broader context, which is certainly valuable, but it still added to the confusion when you didn’t want to refute my incorrect interpretation.
Perhaps for the sake of clarity, I’ll ask directly: is there an error in the Hesari article then, when it says the recommendation was a no-go? Your writing can give the impression that no one held that view.
As a disclaimer, I agree with the company here in every possible way, and perhaps that’s exactly why I would hope for clear communication that doesn’t look like moving the goalposts. That’s when you end up nitpicking that “well, it didn’t quite go like this…” Nylund’s writings on Slack (the Hesari screenshots) and your writing on LinkedIn were indeed exceptionally precise and clear!
OK. I went and added the word “at all” to my text. I was simply briefly referencing the leaked text that has already been available to the general public, and I wasn’t making any claims of my own.
Hasn’t the situation already been clearly covered in the leaked text, the article itself, and also in my text…
The Ethics Desk report recommended a no-go and also explained how to proceed if the process is nonetheless continued. In a joint meeting, they had decided to continue the process in order to gather more information and to be able to evaluate the matter further in the light of more detailed information.
Among almost 1,900 people and in the discussions as well, there are of course many different opinions. Some are certainly of the opinion that nothing should ever be done in that direction. Others are of a different opinion. All opinions are valuable, and that is why we have such a thorough and inclusive process in place regarding this matter.
Thanks for the clarification! I’ll also add that, from an outside perspective, I think the company has acted very elegantly here, and in a certain sense also culturally boldly (in terms of internal transparency). Looking at Nylund’s Slack message, I think it exudes the courage to make decisions, but above all, to justify them. By old-school standards, it would have been progressive just to inform anyone other than the bid team about the decision.
This hasn’t been stated anywhere, but I’m reading between the lines: while more information is being gathered during the preparation of the bid, this ethical evaluation will be revisited before committing to the project. If my interpretation above is correct, then it’s not exactly a drastic decision to postpone the final decision and gather more information. On the contrary, it would be an intellectually lazy decision to withdraw from the bidding process right off the bat if everyone agrees that assessing the matter requires more information.
This is a fairly shocking case overall and it certainly doesn’t increase my respect for HS. Not to mention what kind of convoluted decision-making structure is being used to conduct business (a profitable one at that), if some serial virtue-signallers can pull the rug out from under a well-managed company in a borderline criminal manner. If this were, for instance, a genuinely recognized communist dictatorship, hypothetically China, would these “slack-artists” hiding behind anonymity still be crying to HS Visio’s anti-entrepreneurial editorial staff? Finland is a free country, and if a company’s values don’t align with those of an employee, they can always look for a new job.
That’s exactly it – you can always change jobs. It is, of course, unfortunate if ethics have meant a lot in your values and you want to be at a company that advertises itself as a pioneer of the ethical digital world, but then perhaps it isn’t after all.
That is exactly the case. And it is actually evident from the screenshots in the HS article as well.
Thank you for the perspectives you presented.
Thanks for the message, and it’s nice to get information about the case through such an informal channel, although based on some comments written here, LinkedIn is also heating up around the issue. I don’t use that service myself, so I’m not exactly sure what might have been written about the matter there. Inevitably, however, some more critical thoughts also arose, so let’s start breaking them down point by point.
The fact that none of the responsible parties felt that business couldn’t be done with the UAE at all doesn’t, in my opinion, particularly blunt the edge of the criticism in the Helsingin Sanomat (HS) article. The problem raised by HS (which, based on Nylund’s text, is certainly known to you as well) is that the product being sold carries a realistic risk of being used for serious human rights violations that are perfectly permissible under the laws of the purchasing party. So the problem is not so much the UAE itself, but what is being sold to the UAE. This looks very bad in a situation where the company that manufactured the product has positioned itself as a pioneer of the ethical digital world. I consider it significantly less likely that HS would pick up on a case like this if you were selling, for example, Finnish spring water to the shelves of local grocery stores in the UAE. Of course, the ethical pathos of Gofore’s communication would make even this possible, but the drinking water in my imagined example is a rather weak tool for mass surveillance. Thus, the HS article would lose its realistic basis and slip into the realm of pure moral policing. Now, the concern presented in the article is concrete and recognized by Gofore as well.
As for the common alignment you mentioned between the ethical committee and business management regarding the need for more information, isn’t this “common” alignment still a result of the ethical committee’s primary recommendation (no-go) not being followed? In that case, couldn’t we also speak of a business management policy that the ethical committee has accepted as an alternative starting point for further measures, if it is decided not to act according to the committee’s primary recommendation? This may seem like splitting hairs, but as someone interested in and having studied corporate communication a bit, I cannot help but mention that it is precisely with these kinds of nuances that an image is built in the reader’s eyes that the process has been conducted between two equal actors. In reality, or at least according to my understanding, Gofore’s business management makes the final decisions on a case-by-case basis, either based on the ethical committee’s recommendations or regardless of them. Maintaining the image of equality between the ethical committee and business management is likely important for Gofore, however, as the need for the ethical committee’s existence and the costs of maintaining it are easy for shareholders to question if it turns out that the committee has no real power in the company’s decision-making. In any case, ultimately, in this situation, instead of the ethical committee’s opinions, it seems that what is being weighed above all is whether Gofore’s business management’s ethics will bend in the face of UAE money.
This is certainly true, and in my opinion, the public discussion resulting from this newspaper article has also been interesting and necessary, just as the internal discussion within the company has been. It is tragicomic, however, that in Nylund’s text seen in the illustration of the HS article, this project is considered a risk to the Gofore staff’s opportunity to engage in open discussion. To some extent, this risk has already been realized now that the company may have to restrict its own practices regarding the openness of discussion in the future. On the other hand, the immediate hinting at the possibility of legal action seen in the press release shared here fresh off the presses appeared to me as a communication strategy that could have been taken from the textbook of the other party in these tender negotiations, and it is precisely this kind of influence that Nylund’s concern about the narrowing of employees’ discussion opportunities was, in my opinion, directed at. Publicly intimidating employees into silence always smells like something other than democracy.
Damage has certainly been caused one way or another, there’s no getting around that, although the public media frenzy has remained surprisingly mild in my eyes so far. Regarding transparency, I wondered in a message I wrote earlier in this thread whether the company would have had the opportunity to inform about the start of such negotiations, for example, at the stage when the matter was referred to the ethical committee for review? Of course, this would probably have had to be implemented in a fairly general manner without revealing the trading partner and the exact details of the potential agreement. Now, however, it feels as if the possibility of a leak had not been sufficiently taken into account when planning the communication strategy for a sensitive project, even though I believe that information spreading outside the house from within a work community of almost 1,900 people is inevitable, especially when the volatility of the UAE as a business partner is crystal clear.
Later, I have wondered to myself how such ethical starting points are taken into account at all when negotiating cooperation arrangements. Are the other parties to the negotiations told about the ethical principles of the company’s operations and that a separate committee reviews the potential risks of the offer before signatures are put to paper? Is this ethical side at all a factor in these competitive tenders, or is it kept entirely as an internal company matter and separate from the actual negotiations? One could think that a company that has publicly defined ethics as the cornerstone of its operations would demand that its partners also be ready to sign off on the ethical principles that the company itself holds as its values.
I don’t have much to comment on this, as it is difficult to criticize Finnish companies attracting interest around the world.
Not all companies call themselves ethical pioneers in their field, so not all companies are scrutinized from an ethical perspective. There is also nothing unfair about the news media assuming that such a company stands behind its words. Thus, it is easy to understand why Gofore specifically ended up as the subject of the article. It won’t change no matter how much one nitpicks, but of course, resentment is also understandable and permissible in this situation.
The fact that critical individuals are in the minority at Gofore does not mean they are wrong, so appealing to the size of the staff is irrelevant to ethical questions and directs thinking towards the idea that ethics itself is a kind of majority/minority setup like a vote. In any case, if this Project Horizon proceeds to completion, history will show whether the fears of individual employees regarding these ethical issues were necessary or whether the positive social goals linked to the project can be promoted. Hopefully, we will then be able to discuss the matter on this forum as well, in the spirit of open and public discussion, utilizing our freedom of speech!