Honesty is the Best Policy
In business we compete hard. We want to outperform the world. It isn’t just a money thing. We want to be the best we can be and we are usually arrogant enough to believe that is better than most.
But we don’t cheat.
The Honesty Test
Too much is made of the supposed difficulty of knowing right from wrong in business.
The test is simple.
If someone has misled, done what they promised they wouldn’t do, or failed to do what they promised they would do in order to enrich themselves at somebody else’s expense, he or she is dishonest.
Finance and Temptation
Finance offers plenty of ways to be dishonest.
• If you need some profit, you can reduce expenses by recording them as capital expenditures
• If you are worried about your bank security, you can record as inventory a pile of stuff you know is unsaleable
• You can hide your profits from the taxman
• You can trade some shares on a hot tip from an insider
As Woody Guthrie said, some people rob with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen. Either way, it’s stealing.
Those white-collar crooks you see being led to the slammer – the ones with the nice suits that don’t go with the handcuffs – most were involved in schemes like these.
Crooks Get Caught
The law is slow. But it has a long memory and it is patient and thorough.
Someone always has a very long-term interest in seeing you get caught – the victim. Victims and their contingency fee lawyers have big incentives to chase you forever. The file never dies.
Secondly, crooks almost never act alone. Somebody usually knows you did it. If the law so much as sniffs around them, they panic. When the law offers them a choice of their skin or yours, for some reason they always choose yours.
The World of the Crook
Lots of crooks sleep soundly. Lots of them are rich. Lot’s don’t get caught.
However, they are jerks and all the normal people in the world know it. They traded their souls away so long ago they can’t remember having them.
A crook lives in an ugly little world. It includes only:
• other crooks
• people they pay to be nice to them (usually family members)
• those who have no choice but to deal with them.
Most of these people don’t like crooks but they tolerate them out of self-interest.
But honest people make crooks invisible. They cross the street to avoid them. They leave a party if they see them arrive. They won’t let their kids play with the crook’s kids.
With all that money, crooks end up on a desert island.
The Honest Man is a Free Man
Honest people in business are tempted too. Fear of financial failure or the prospect of enormous profit tempt them at some point to do something dishonest.
The difference between them and the crooks is that that they make the harder choice.
Except that it isn’t harder.
The single most liberating moment in a business career is doing the honest thing in face of great temptation. It is almost as if the devil has been waiting for you since you were a kid. He prepares a trap just for you – but you jump right over it.
You do the right thing and from then on, you know you can’t be bought.
The Value of an Honest Reputation
As a reputation for honesty builds over a career, it buys a lot of good will.
At important points, you need someone to trust you. You are in a bind. You have made a promise about something to a lender, supplier or customer. You need them to believe it in order to get yourself out of the bind.
I have seen lenders give time and money to customers in trouble because of trust. Everyday you are honest is a day of good will in the bank. A time will come when that deposit pays for what makes the difference.
Looking Your Kids in the Eye
I often wonder what crooks say to their children. “You know son, don’t believe all that bad stuff about tax evasion” or “Insider trading gets a bad rap.”
The reward of being honest is that your kids know it. That gives you the right to look them in the eye and that is one of the most precious rights of all.
Posted by tedcape 
Posted by tedcape 