Marianne Jennings was my ethics professor at the WP Carey School of Business in Arizona. Her class, as tough as it was, ingrained in me the importance of having a clear ethical lens when it comes to business practices.  Dr. Jennings could boil down ethical decisions to one simple question:

“What if your actions made the front page of the newspaper? Would you be proud or embarrassed?”

That was 2002, even before the meteoric growth of the “social Internet.” Now, while the relative importance of newspapers can be debated, no one can debate the power of viral messaging. So it was perhaps without surprise then, that this article was passed to me by a colleague late yesterday:

TicketMaster: We were not involved in Elton John ticket trouble in Canada.

The actions of TM and their subsidiary TicketsNow are again called into question, as hard to get Elton John tickets went straight to TicketsNow, where they will, of course, fetch a higher price. The question is though- can TM deny responsibility here? They own both properties, they had to be aware of this and the negative perception it would undeniably seed.

I probably answered that question in an earlier post. TM has enough of a monopoly that they are pretty much immune to public outcry. At least for now. But what about this bizarre marriage of the primary and secondary market? What business rules should apply? TM will never prohibit tickets from its shows from ending up on TicketsNow, that would be completely counter-intuitive. It will be interesting to see how this ethical mire plays out, since the head-in-the-sand excuse will soon lose its efficacy.