Did Wheeler Have an Ethical Obligation to Disclose His 10 Years of Banking & Investment Experience?

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

GoLocalPDX News Team

If you read Ted Wheeler’s campaign bios over the past twenty years it would be almost impossible to know what he did professionally after graduating from Stanford and then when he earned his MBA from Columbia -- there is functionally ten years out of 15 that are undefined.

Human resource and career counselors regionally and nationally provide consistent guidance that jobseekers have a responsibility to be transparent and disclose all relevant aspects of one’s work experience.

“If your question is whether it would be considered legal fraud, the answer is no. If the question is whether most employers would consider you to have lied to them, the answer is yes (even a lie by omission),” said one career expert.

“Whether the employer would take action upon discovering the omission depends on the employer, how long between the time you applied and they discovered the omission, and how well you had actually performed the job in the meantime. If they discover the omission within a relatively short time after hiring you, I would think that most employers would consider discharging you. If it's been a relatively long period of time, and you've performed the job well, most would probably overlook the omission.”

For Wheeler, he is asking voters to hire him as the next Mayor of Portland, but has consistently failed to disclose over a 20 year period his work for Bank of American, Bay State Capital Fund, and Cooper Mountain Trust and Union Bank (today a part of Mitsubishi Bank.

Tell the Truth

“t's an extreme case. Many people have issues they'd rather sweep under the carpet than reveal on a resume — from work-history gaps to degrees not received to an age that's either too ripe or too raw to admit. But all resume issues have one thing in common: Getting caught in a lie about them can obliterate your chances of getting hired, according to a column by Lisa Vaas of TheLadders, entitled, “To Tell the Truth, Resume Rules.”

TheLadders is the premier mobile career network, committed to finding the right person for the right job since 2003.