Is it still cheating even when you think you are helping others?

We have all seen situations where we wonder why certain decisions have been made, and, sometimes the decision seems to conflict with our personal standards of ethics. In fact, the importance of personal and professional ethics has become so important that many colleges make ethics a required course. Think about Enron, Parmalat, Martha Stewart, Bernie Madoff and the Wall Street debacle caused by phony baloney home loans, and you will see what I mean.

This Mentoring Moment (MM) is about intellectual honesty and ethics, and in particular the rationalization of questionable decisions that are made on the basis that the decision maker is not just furthering his or her personal interests but also the interests of others – making it is OK to cheat and be unethical. This is a particularly dangerous type of situational ethics leading to intellectual dishonesty. Hopefully, you chuckled a bit and agree with me that Wally in not on the right track.

Research has identified a number of axioms in the area. Here are just a few:

• Ethical dilemmas occur regularly and often involve resolution of differing interests (or conflicting positions): by behaving ethically, people are able to maintain their positive self-image and personal ethos; by behaving unethically, they can advance their self-interest
• People often resolve this conflict through “creative” reassessments and self-serving rationalizations, such that they can act dishonestly enough to profit from their unethicality, but honestly enough to maintain a positive self-image
• When individuals have the opportunity to cheat in situations where the probability of being caught and reputational costs are minimized, most people cheat
• People are more likely to engage in unethical behavior if they split the spoils of such behavior with another person than when they are the only ones benefiting from it because they find it easier to discount the moral concerns associated with unethical behavior that benefits another person than to discount behavior that only benefits oneself

At this point, let me offer an example.

Major League Baseball star pitcher Andy Pettitte was recently accused of using human growth hormones, a substance banned by the League. In a public admission, Pettitte said he did not take the drug “to try to get an edge on anyone,” nor “to try to get stronger, faster, or to throw harder.” Rather, he took the substance in an effort to get off the disabled list so that he “would not let his team down.” That is, he justified the unethical decision by saying, while the banned substance did allow him to get back to the game faster and stronger, it helped the team more. Therefore, it was an acceptable decision.

Are you convinced by this explanation that he acted with intellectual honesty and good ethics? Does it matter if you represent the League? What if you were on another team? What if you were on the Team and his actions allowed him to get back on the mound to help you win a World Series Championship? What if you were a vendor at the stadium and stood to make more money if the team had more fans at the ballpark and played mores games?

How many of the four axioms listed above do you find triggered in the Pettitte scenario? What would you do? Would your decision be different if we were not talking about the Yankees and the significant money involved in winning a World Series? What if you were faced with a minor deviation from your company’s accounting procedures?

Before you answer, please consider these recent findings from Harvard:

• Dishonest behavior increases as the number of people benefiting from the dishonesty rises
• Cheating motivated by potential benefits to others helps wrongdoers feel less guilty about their own actions and helps the wrongdoer feel like he or she is preserving their moral self-image and personal ethos
• When there are other beneficiaries of people’s dishonest actions in addition to themselves, they perceive their unethical behavior to be morally acceptable and justified
• Concern for the outcome and the well-being of others can lead people to behave unethically when they feel that they are in the same position as others involved (those they think they are helping) or when they otherwise feel empathy toward the beneficiaries of their dishonesty

Many unethical actions, including, cheating and lying, are motivated by the benefits these actions accrue to others (clearly, if someone lies or cheats solely for their own benefit, the ethical issues are much clearer, right? Think back to Wally, above.). Consider the “white lies” parents tell their children to prompt better outcomes for their children, such as “Santa Claus will come down the chimney if you behave” or “If you don’t eat your veggies, your hair won’t grow.” These examples highlight how the potential benefits to others can motivate a person’s own lies. However, many of the lies do not only benefit others, but also bear direct benefits to the self: the behavior of the children may improve and the meal may get finished without open warfare breaking out in the home with a “little white lie.”

OK, what does this have to with work?

I need another Dilbert to cross over to that subject. Please bear with me. When you stop laughing (and wondering if Scott Adams is talking about your group, again) come back to the text, Ok?

There are numerous implications where situational ethics are triggered at work. One obvious area relative to this MM is the basic way we work: we try to have a collaborative work environment and team approaches are encouraged by management. Most companies offer training in the areas of ethics and honesty and there is “Self Help” is available through the Intranet . This MM is offered merely to complement other training and information sources you have in hand.

Self-managed or empowered teams are one of the most prevalent groups in modern corporations, including ours. In these teams, decision making authority is delegated to individual members who are in charge of making decisions with consequences for their peers and their organization. The upside to empowerment of the team can be overwhelmed by the downsides of the increased moral flexibility induced by the presence of others. Group think tends to dilute the levels of honesty and the standards of ethics any single member of the team has. Thus, one implication can be that some members of team should not be a part of the social circle of the group, and another is the recognition that good people who care about their coworkers can in fact end up cheating more.

So, as you move ahead in your collaborative teams, keep in mind the role of ethics, intellectual honesty and the core value of integrity. The temptation to push through a decision or make a recommendation to senior management that is not well reasoned, based largely on expediency or that is too easily rationalized on a basis of questionable ethics is very powerful. The nature of teams makes peer pressure a daunting factor to deal with, especially when you are in a minority position or when you do not have “seniority” among the group members. Sometimes, it takes leadership and a strong will to stand up for what is right. When the team is about to be overpowered by the temptation to rationalize an ethically unclear decision on the basis that, while the decision may help complete a team’s goal or tasks, it’s ethical issues are justified because other people will benefit, too, run for cover.

Today, ethics is not just for attorneys anymore.

Sources: Working paper on Self-Serving Altruism, HBS, Sept 2012; “Wearing two different hats: moral decisions may depend on the situation”, Leavitt, The Academy of Management Journal, May 2012, and Dilbert