In business, life and politics there are opportunities to take ethical shortcuts to get ahead, be more popular or make more money. Some of them are perfectly legal. All of them are wrong.
Most of the time you’ll probably get away with a short-cut, or two, or three…
That one time, however, that one dodgy decision will come back to haunt you. You’ll see your name in the newspaper, your spouse or child will ask you about a rumor that they heard, or your friends and clients will stop wanting to be seen with you.
None of these outcomes are worth the gains from the short-cut.
Once you’ve been caught once, your friends, family, partners, colleagues, and clients will assume that you’re hiding more transgressions, even if it really was a onetime thing.
It can take years to build a great reputation and a second to turn it into a bad one. Sometime’s it’s impossible to build it back up again once you’ve lost it.
Larry Ellison once said that the moral high ground is the most expensive real estate. I disagree. Building on the moral low-ground is like building on sand, one day the foundations are going to give way.
When facing a questionable decision ask yourself whether you are happy telling your spouse, friends and family about what you’re doing. If the answer is no. Then your answer must be no.