You Are Not as Ethical As You Think

 

Source:https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.c7mXNTqJADlqhYy5ecxoUQHaLb?w=201&h=310&c=7&r=0&o=5&pid=1.7 

Take a moment to reflect on your morals, your values, and your ethical stances. How ethical do you think you are? If you are like most people, you might think that you are not that bad. You are a good person who tends to do the right thing. I mean you do not kill people, right? Dr. Bazerman, professor at the esteemed Harvard Business School, in his book, Blind Spots, states this very claim.

All that may be true; there is one problem. If the person that you compare yourself to is Hitler, then, of course, you are a good person. However, if one were to humble themselves truly and I mean truly. You will find you are not as good of a person. Here is my test: have you ever lied? have you ever gossiped? have you ever viewed someone under the guise of hatred or envy? These are only some of the questions that I can come up with on the spot. That is not the point; my purpose is to give you at least a deeper understanding of your morality. One needs lots of humility to do this. It does not feel satisfying to criticize yourself for not being “perfect”. I am not saying that you need to be “perfect”, but to combat the next fraud case from happening we need to take an inward look into ourselves. Sometimes by doing this we can find defects of our own character. Sure, we can see these defects of ourselves and think we would never kill someone, for example, let alone commit financial fraud. I think we need to look at this closer. Dr. Bazerman has stated that by accepting these small defects, it can lead to ethical fading. Ethical fading is when your own ethics and morality slowly get chipped away and more immoral actions are justified over time. I will give you an example. Let's say that you begin to tell white lies to people. White lies, while bad and should not be encouraged, does not hurt people as much as a big lie. However, if you begin to do it more often and never put a stop to it, it can snowball into saying bigger and bigger lies. Since you are doing it more often, you begin to see it as normal. I hope that you can see where I am going. You might see this as an exaggeration, but it can spiral into you committing fraud. Consistently doing a bad thing can lead to it becoming worse. The best way I can describe it is that it is like a drug addiction. In the beginning the drug use might not be as bad or harmful, just temporary pleasure, but, later, it can spiral out of control and ruin your physical and mental health, personal relationships and even can be a cause of death.

Overall, my message here is: try to become a better moral person. By recognizing our own faults, we can prevent ourselves from potentially committing a horrible crime but also help and recognize other people's shortcomings. This small effort can lead to a big change in the accounting world.