Cheating on the Ethics Exam

Just about three years ago one of Canada’s premier accounting firms caught some of its juniors cheating on its internal training program. Not ten of them, not a hundred, but twelve hundred.

Now, as if that weren’t sketchy enough, what if I told you this firm was the second largest professional services firm in the world, with nearly a third of a million employees? And what if I told you the tests on which these juniors cheated were part of the ethics exam? Yes, accountants cheating on ethics. That’s kind of like young firefighters doing a little contract arson work on the side.

Both the Canadian and the American regulatory boards slapped the firm very severely on the wrist and made them pay a big fine, something in the order of three dollars for each global employee. Ouch, I think. I’ll bet that impacted executive bonuses!

Would it be cynical to doubt that students and juniors in all the other big accounting firms ever cheat, but just never got caught? And do you suppose young lawyers would ever do such a thing? Not on ethics, of all subjects!

But tut-tutting and finger wagging aside, let’s just pause for a moment and consider the notion of having ethics courses and ethics exams for young professionals. Teaching people in their mid to late twenties the difference between right and wrong. And what about all those youngsters who don’t have the benefit of belonging to professions who can teach them right from wrong? Will they all become inadvertent bandidos?

There just may be, and I don’t mean to be dogmatic, but there just may be a problem when as a society we have to teach young adults the difference between right and wrong, because if they’re going to cheat on the very exam, they may not have been paying attention in the lectures.

When professions have to instruct their young the difference between good and bad, honesty and lies, uprightness and crookedness, they may have a problem two decades in the making. And we may all have such a problem.

Ethics are learned from your mom, and your dad. They’re learned from your primary teacher, your scout leader, the crossing guard, and your soccer coach.

Ethics are not learned from books or courses. Ethics are learned by watching influencers do the right thing, demonstrably, day after day, often when the right thing is the hard thing.

Ethics are not subject matter, academic notions. They’re habits and attitudes, reflexes burned into our souls by hard knocks and the influence of those who love and guide us.

Cheating on ethics exams is a bad thing, but the need to have ethics exams for young adults is much worse.

I rest my case.