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When Good Clients Ask You to Do Bad Things | 4 Tips for Weathering the Storm
December 19th, 2007 in Web Design Culture
by: Matthew Griffin
Bad clients are easy to come by. Just lower your prices enough and you'll have a whole school of them swimming around waiting to bite the hook. Good clients, on the other hand, are much more elusive. They seem to materialize out of thin air—usually by some complicated word-of-mouth train. And once you catch one, they stick with you. They listen to what you say and they keep coming back for more. You may find one of these clients a year—maybe not even that often. After a few years of doing business, you find that that little collection of good clients is the fire behind your passion for web design. You want to do everything you can to keep them with you. That's where the problem occurs.
How do you deal with a good client who wants you to do something unethical? If it hasn't already happened to you, count on it at some point. And when it does happen you will see that it can be one of the most nerve racking experiences. The best thing you can do to weather the storm is plan ahead. Here's a list of pointers for ethics in web design that will help you sleep at night and hopefully earn you even more respect from your good clients:
1. Give your ethics a leg to stand on
When you determine that your ethics are based on a standard higher than yourself, you will be less likely to bend them. As a Christian, I can't leave my worldview at home. I have to remember to bring it with me to work.
2. Never answer right away
If a client proposes something iffy, ask for a day to think about it. This forces them to think harder about their proposal. Half the time they'll be the one to take the it off the table.
3. Be firm and concise
In the case that you do have to come back and put your foot down, make sure you are ready for the confrontation. Don't circle around the issue. Restate your client's original request and give a clear and firm reason why you won't be a part of it. You'll only lose respect if you trail off into a bunch of "whatever's right for you" clichés.
4. Know the common ethical issues people face in your industry
Pornographic content, copyright infringement, deceptive advertising, and requests for retro-dated invoices are the most common ones I run into. I'd like to add "logos designed by office secretaries" but I'm not sure that's an ethical issue. If I've left any big ones off this list, please comment.
I have yet to lose a client because I stayed firm on an ethical issue—keep that in mind. More often than not, in this post-modernist society, clients are awe-struck (in a good way) when I refuse to do something on ethical grounds—as if I'm an endangered species. Maybe I am, but I'd like to save the species if possible.
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