Des Moines Register
04-16-06
Elbert: Cheaters justify actions with any excuse
DAVID ELBERT
REGISTER BUSINESS COLUMNIST
I know people who cheat.
You do, too.
I consider myself a moral person, but the truth is there have been times when I
have cheated. You probably have, too.
Neither of us has cheated on an Enron scale, but if we stop and think about
people we know, I'm sure we can come up with at least a few we believe would,
given the chance.
So, what makes them different from us?
One thing may be cheaters' abilities to distance themselves from the idea that
there is anything wrong with wrongdoing, when they do it.
They use a number of strategies. They convince themselves that the system isn't
fair. Or that everybody else is doing it. Some even believe they are expected to
cheat.
Four college professors who teach business courses have been studying
cheating. The rationale I've just described, along with others, are included in their
findings.
Three teach at Iowa State University: Jeffrey B. Kaufmann, Sue Pickard
Ravenscroft and Charles Bradley Shrader. The fourth, Timothy D. West, teaches
at the University of Arkansas. They've written a paper called "Ethical Distancing"
for the Business & Professional Ethics Journal.
The paper is based on a situation that West, who teaches accounting, stumbled
into a few years ago when he was teaching at a different school. He gave
students a take-home test and told them to complete it individually, without help
from other students or the Internet.
Unknown to West, another professor had posted an answer key to the problem
on the Internet, and unknown to the students, the college had the ability to track
students who went to the Internet page where the answer key was.
When West discovered that at least 47 of the 64 students in the class had
cheated on the test, he threw out the test and decided to use the situation as a
learning opportunity. He persuaded the students to anonymously answer a series
of questions about what they did and why.
The students' answers provide the basis for the academic paper, which the
authors shared with me last week.
The responses show a wide range of motivations and rationalizations.
"Some of the responses can curdle your blood," said ISU's Shrader, who teaches
business ethics.
Some students had the attitude that "cheating is a way of life, that everybody
does it," he said.
"Others would say cheating is wrong, but what I was really doing was learning,
not cheating," Shrader explained.
One indignant student, who clearly had cheated, wrote: "I am not a cheater. In
fact, I abhor cheaters just as much as drunk drivers and psychotic terrorists. If I
were in the position to uncover a cheater, I would readily do so."
The indignant student's ability to distance himself from what he had done is a
scary thing for real-world managers, said co-author Kaufmann.
Most managers will not have to deal with Enron-size ethics issues, but they will
have to deal with a lot of little things, such as expense account padding and
discrimination.
Little things have a cumulative effect, he said. Over time, they can cause people
to distrust an organization or create unnecessary adversarial situations.
"Managers need to focus on the behavior, not the interpretation," Kaufmann said.
For example, he said, an all-male work force may be hesitant to bring in a
woman.
"If you talk to people," Kaufmann said, they rationalize. "They'll say they don't
discriminate. They'll say they worry about group cohesiveness. What will it do to
people's comfort level at the work site" if you bring in a woman. "By doing that,
we make the behavior seem acceptable."
He said, "Instead, just focus on the decision. Are you differentiating based on this
person being a female, or being a minority?
"Don't tell me that it's other people or anything else."
Cheating on an expense account is similar, Kaufmann said. "It doesn't matter if
other people do it. The question is: Did you do it?"
Some strategies of the past no longer work, the authors said.
"In past, we've told students: 'If you cheat, you are only cheating yourself.'
"Apparently, a lot of people are willing to take that hit," Kaufmann said.
A better strategy, he said, is to focus on who is being hurt.
"If you cheat on your expense account, that's less money for other things in the
department. It's less money for your colleagues who may deserve it."
People, whether they are workers or students, need to know the rules and
understand them, Kaufmann said.
"I explain to my students that if I catch them cheating, I will come down hard on
them. I explain: 'It has nothing to do with you. It has to do with the C-student who
is honest and struggling.'"
As a former C-student who struggled to stay honest in college, I've known a
number of people who cheated, cut corners or were dishonest in other ways
throughout my career.
Often, these people received short-term rewards. Inevitably, though, there was a
price to pay that more than made up for the short-term gain.
Sharder put it another way.
"If cheating truly was a principle that worked," he said, "if you could cheat and get
ahead, we'd be teaching it."