Culture of Cheating

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I’ve always believed that American workers are basically honest people who want to do the right thing. But at the same time, we’ve always been quick to fudge the margins.


It’s always gone on. Office copy paper ends up in the home printer. The great aunt’s funeral is really an afternoon at the beach. Little things, mostly.


But in recent years, it seems to me, our capacity to occasionally fudge has devolved into regular thievery. Office laptops are carted home and reported as “stolen.” Phantom trips show up on expense reports. Bigger transgressions.


If you catch a worker in the act, he may not be contrite. “Hey, I didn’t take much,” he may plead. “Besides, just look at the guys at the top.”


Indeed, look at the guys at the top. We don’t even need to consider Enron and Adelphia and their ilk to see poor examples set by the board room, what with the recent instances of board-approved spying and backdated stock options.


Have we created a culture of cheating throughout society? Have we become so numb to cheating and stealing that we shrug it off as the new norm? Are we surprised or disheartened any more when we learn an athlete took steroids or an ambitious politician inflated her resume?


That’s why I was interested to see a survey released officially this week by L.A.’s Josephson Institute of Ethics. Josephson surveyed a lot of high school students more than 36,000 and 28 percent admitted stealing from a store in the past year and 81 percent admitted they lied to a parent about something significant. Think about that. One out of four stole and four out of five lied. About something significant.


It doesn’t end there. Sixty percent admitted they cheated on a test in the past year; 35 percent did so two or more times.


The good news is, it’s not getting any worse: That 60 percent figure has been fairly consistent since Josephson began taking the survey in 1992. The bad news is, it’s not getting any better.


“We’ve developed an entrenched culture of cheating,” said Michael Josephson, who runs the non-profit from offices near Los Angeles International Airport.


According to Josephson, what this all implies for those who manage a sizeable business is this: If you have an ethics session for employees or executives and leave it at that, you may be wasting time and money. You need to think of creating an overall culture of ethical behavior, including adopting standards and enforcing them.


For example, incoming employees often are waved through their probationary period, he said. If they can do the job, they stay. Instead, managers should look for newbies who exaggerate or over promise or outright lie. They should be washed out.


Funny, but his survey also showed that kids think of themselves as fairly honest and upstanding. Ninety two percent said they are “satisfied with my own ethics and character,” and 74 percent said, “When it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.”


I still hold to my old belief that Americans are honest but willing to fudge the margins. But I fret that someday I may have to change to something like: Americans like to think they’re honest, but they are quick and willing to lie and steal.



Charles Crumpley is editor of the Business Journal. He can be reached at

[email protected]

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