Q. Your co-workers sometimes have loud conversations near you, and they don’t seem to realise that the noise is keeping you from concentrating. What should you do?

A. First, ask yourself whether the situation is truly unacceptable, or whether you are actually angry about something else and taking it out on the co-workers.

“Nobody likes a negative employee, and even if the loud behaviour is well-documented and not officially tolerated in the office, being the ‘office cop’ is not something to aspire to,” said J.T. ’Donnell, co-author of the syndicated column J.T. & Dale Talk Jobs and founder of Blue Kilowatt, a career coaching firm in North Hampton, New Hampshire.

On the other hand, loud talkers were among the biggest pet peeves in the workplace in a survey conducted last March by Randstad USA, a human resources consulting company in Atlanta. So if the loud talking is affecting your ability to perform your job, your co-workers probably are too loud.

But rather than involving the boss, ’Donnell said, it is better to try to deal with the issue yourself. “Say something like: ‘Guys, I’m having trouble concentrating while you are talking. I’d be so grateful if you could take the conversation down the hall’.”

If they listen to you, make sure to follow up and thank them.

Q.Is it possible that some loud talkers aren’t aware that they are loud?

A. Yes. People who have an impaired inner ear because of ageing, chemotherapy, genetics or exposure to noise may not be able to hear how loud they are, said Hamid Djalilian, assistant professor and director of otology and neurotology at the University of California, Irvine Medical Center. Dr Djalilian, who studies the ear, hearing and balance, said, “You set your voice level based on how well you actually hear yourself.”

Q.What about personal phone conversations at your desk? How loud is too loud and how personal is too personal?

A. Some people — even those with just a small amount of hearing loss — can’t gauge how loud they are when they speak on the phone. If we can’t hear the person at the other end of a call, we compensate by raising our own voice, said Vishakha Rawool, an associate professor in the speech pathology and audiology department at West Virginia University.

A good rule of thumb is to use a “library voice” while on the phone and to keep chit-chat to a minimum. While it’s inevitable that people will take care of some personal business at work, you shouldn’t have to listen to your neighbour plan her wedding for three hours a day, or talk about his romantic date last night, ’Donnell said.

“We all have cellphones,” she said. “Take the call out to your car, the lunchroom or an empty conference room and have personal conversations there.”

There are also potential legal and ethical problems related to the content of overheard phone conversations. If a phone conversation is making you uncomfortable, that conversation could constitute an ethics violation besides an etiquette violation, according to Richard Cellini, a lawyer and vice-president for strategy and product development at Integrity Interactive in Boston, which provides online training in business ethics.

“Inappropriate topics, such as conversations about race, religion or gender that can be heard three cubes away, aren’t just annoying,” Cellini said. “They could be seen as creating a hostile work environment.”

Q.What is the best way to tell a loud co-worker about your concerns?

A. Be direct and diplomatic, but never attack someone personally. Focus on the action that’s bothering you, not the person, and don’t make value judgments. “Most reasonable people are willing to alter their actions, especially if you have an alternative plan in mind,” Cellini said. “But if you start questioning their motivations or values, you’ll find them more resistant.”

Keep your tone light and breezy; after all, this is not a life-threatening situation, said Kerry Patterson, chief development officer at VitalSmarts, an interpersonal management and leadership development training company in Provo, Utah.

And steer clear of terms like “obnoxious”, “uncaring” or “insensitive”, Patterson said. “Those are ugly conclusions,” he said, “And that’s not the issue anyway.”

Q.Is it possible that you’re being oversensitive?

A. Yes. And being too sensitive to noise usually has less to do with your hearing than with your psyche, Djalilian said. Anxious people tend to be more sensitive to noise because of hormonal changes that result from that anxiety, he said. And some people are just easily distracted.

Q.When should a manager become involved?

A. It’s always best to try to resolve problems with co-workers yourself. That way, employees working in close proximity wind up setting the terms of the protocol themselves, said Brendan Courtney, a senior vice-president at Spherion, a staffing company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

But if you’ve tried and nothing has changed — or if your colleague is now angry with you — it’s time to go to your immediate supervisor. Managers can set aside a place, like a conference room or empty office, for conversations between two or more people and for private phone calls.

Another way to manage a dispute is to work together to set noise standards for a group of cubicles.

“Get everyone in a pod of cubicles together and set some ground rules,” Patterson advised. “This way, you take the pressure off individuals to confront others and make it a group standard instead.”