Real-Life Decision Making
You're the administrator for a state arts society. Part of your job includes presenting artists with grant money from the council to pursue their work. This is the part of your job you like best because you're always happy to present a starving artist with some much-needed money.
You recently approved an application submitted by a local fiction writer. His plan for a book of short stories sounded great to you, so you awarded him $1,200 to help toward expenses on the condition that he'd allow the council to view and display his work.
Six months later, the writer comes to your office to show you his finished work.
You have a look and quickly discover this is no book of short stories -- it's a book of poetry. Your council has a policy that if an artist's project changes after a grant has been awarded, the artist has to notify you and arrange for permission to continue.
Your writer knew this, but when you object he just says, "You'll feel differently when you read them. Go ahead, just read it."
You read the poetry and it is excellent, but you're faced with a terrible decision here. You shouldn't allow him to use grant money for something other than what he told the council he was using it for. If you allow him to do this, what stops other artists from applying for grants for painting and then producing sculptures?
On the other hand, you know this writer doesn't have $1,200 to give back to you, and you don't really want to have to ask for it back.
"He was a fine writer and his poetry was great," says Randy Follett, an art administrator who faced exactly this decision.
What do you do?