System Adminstration and Corporate Ethics?

Not-a-BOFH asks: "About seven years ago while SysAdmin'ing for a (then) small software company, I was approached by the CEO regarding a technical issue. He explained to me that he got a bit hot headed at another employee and sent said person an email that he now wished he hadn't sent. His request to me was to dig through this person's email and delete it before he came in that morning. As the SysAdmin, this was certainly possible for me to do, but I've always tried to remain ethical when having such access to sensitive documents. In the case of email, I explained to the CEO that to me it was like tampering with the U.S. Mail, and I wasn't comfortable doing it. Long story short, my boss had no issue with it, and wound up doing it anyway. Looking back now, I'm not really all that surprised that that decision of mine led to my getting fired, but I've always wondered how many other people have had similar situations happen to them, where personal ethics and CEO heavyhanding came into play, and their job security suffered from the clash."

Comments

Uhhh

[tswinzig]

What does this have to do with SysAdmin'ing? This theme is as old as dirt. Your boss wants you to do something unethical, or they'll fire you.

And you want to hear more stories about this?

WHY??

I thought the point of Ask Slashdot was to be able to learn something. Why didn't you ask something more interesting, such as, Do you think I can win a lawsuit against this company, and on what grounds would I file?