You are risking a lot regardless of the decision you make. If you speak up to your boss, you could risk offending them or appearing like you are challenging their authority. This could have longer-term consequences, such as not being as valued or liked as other members of your team and potentially being passed up for promotions or other opportunities in the future. These consequences are only magnified if you are young, since there is a longer time for these consequences to manifest, or if you are a woman, since you may be perceived as even more disrespectful. However, if you accept an ethically dubious task, there are also risks. Especially because Susan is still in MBA school and essentially at the start of her business career, her actions could definitely affect future employment. The industry is small, and word will definitely get around between employers.
3-step plan: To realize how psychologically difficult speaking up can be, I would think about and list out the reasons why it’s difficult. This would include listing out all the potential negative consequences of speaking out. Because of this, this may psych me out from speaking up, but I would also list out the reasons why speaking up would be incredibly worthwhile. This way, I’ll head in realistic about expectations but determined to speak up. To lesson the social threat that speaking up creates, I would make sure my email to my manager is well-written to take into account status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, and fairness, getting feedback from others to make sure I send the best message possible. Then, I will make a plan of how I will send the email, whether I will follow up with the manager after, how I will interact with the manager after, and how I will deal with future situations like this.
