Randy Cohen's Ethicist column in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine had a call center-related question:

I was to screen candidates for a job at my office that requires considerable phone time with our high-end, snobbish customers. When my boss said, "Don't bring in anyone who wants to 'ax' you a question," my first reaction was that she wanted me to exclude African-Americans. My boss claims to support equal opportunity, but was she being racist here? -- name withheld, New York

Here's mine: This is a hiring question. As any conscientious hiring manager will tell you, discrimination and racial profiling is never appropriate. If we assume the best in the boss in the example above -- that she was not making a veiled request to avoid hiring people of a certain ethinicity -- then we're left with a question of good phone manner.

Call centers want to hire people who sound good on the phone. People with pleasant voices, who speak clearly.

But this can also be seen as a training question. Every center has its own style. Some rely on scripts so much that the individual agent's speaking style may not ever matter. Others want agents who will sound casual and unscripted. Most centers will train agents to answer calls the way they need them to answer calls.

Look at off-shore centers -- some Indian call centers will train their agents to sound like Americans or Britons. A great deal can be taught. So decide how much your center wants to teach and how much you want your applicants to bring to the job, but don't discriminate.