A Battle Against Cheating
When students were at middle school, they were told that the only way to gain success was through hard working. As a student, you should work hard to get good a grade. As an employee, you should work hard to get a promotion. This is a classic American dream: as long as you work hard, you can always achieve your dream no matter what backgrounds you come from. However, reality seems to be disappointed. Working hard is not the only way to get ahead any more. Those who work much harder seem to be less successful than those who work less hard but know how to play tricks. Cheating is a secret weapon that could make you move forward. It is becoming more common, tempting and covert than it was fifty years ago. It is the time to hold our remaining virtues to fight against unethical behaviors. We should identify factors that have led to the phenomenon of cheating and then seek effective ways to conquer it. In their book Final Accounting, Toffler and Reingold (2003) talked about how the world once greatest accounting firm Arthur Andersen cheated together with its clients to mislead investors and eventually collapsed after being disclosed many astounded accounting scandals of the firm. Toffler and Reingold (2003) pointed out that people tend to blame such cheating scandals to a few bad individuals. Whereas, it is the culture that should take the responsibility. It is the corrupting culture that makes cheating an attractive way to get what you want (p.204). In the book, The Cheating Culture, David Callahan (2004) provided a lucid analysis of how this cheating culture we are living in generated and what we can do to get over it. He defined cheating as “breaking the rules to get ahead academically, professionally or financially” (as cited in Callahan, 2004, p.14). According to Callahan (2004), people fall in to two classes, the Winning Class and the Anxious Class. The Winning Class, who is the ruler, can cheat without consequences; while the Anxious Class treat cheating as the only way to get ahead giving the economic inequality. The perception “everybody does it” makes cheating persuasive and common (p.25). Callahan (2004) summarized that there are four reasons why Americans choose to cheat to get ahead: new pressures, bigger rewards for Winning, temptation and trickle down corruption (p.21-23). The new pressures that to survive in the current free market and economic inequality make people unethical when make decisions. Callahan (2004) said that the new pressures come from increscent gap between the Winning Class and the rest. He attributed the gap to the victories of laissez-faire ideologues and the economic inequality followed it. The laissez-faire market makes the distribution of opportunities and resources unevenly between the Winning Class and the rest. The Winning Class gets most of them (p.96-p.97). According to Callahan (2004), about 40 percent of American household wealth is held by top 1 percent of Americans, compared to only 20 percent of wealth in 1979 (p.67). The winner-take-all economy provides shields for winners while leave others, the majority of us, living under great pressure. The American’s values reshaped since last century. According to Toffler and Reingold (2003), in the early 1950s and 1960s, the partners at Arthur Andersen valued more about reputation and quality than getting rich. However, for partners in the 1990s, money is everything. (p.109). In the old times, people were under the pressure to be honest and retain good reputation while at now people are pushed to earn much more money. It is all about money, no matter using what means to get it. In order to attain this goal, many of them choose to cheat. Money is not the only pressure. The high unemployment rate makes jobs much unsecured than ever. I conducted an interview with Lucia Kong, a manager of Wyse Technology Inc., to talk about how she and her company deals with the ethical issues faced. “ Employees are under tremendous pressure that they might lose their jobs if they do not perform better than others,” she said, “They are so anxious about jobs because the cost of losing a job is huge. It is very tough to find another job offering similar salaries in such a competitive economy.” The insecurity and anxiety caused by new pressures force people to leave their ethics behind in order to fight their future. New pressures not only push people to work, but also push them to find any other ways to get ahead, including cheating.
The second factor that force people to cheat is bigger rewards for winning, another product of economic inequality. During the past decades, the wealth shifted dramatically to the Winning Class. According to Callahan (2004), under free market, meaner and leaner companies make managers get more paid while workers get less. Government also plays a role in encouraging the wealth flow towards the Winning Class and enacting winner-favored tax policy (p.67). A quarter of American workers earn less than $19,000 a year, while for winners, Millard Drexler, who is the former CEO of Gap, for example, earn more than $25 million a year (Callahan, 2004, p.65). The big rewards for winners are not limited to the wealth they got. Winners also get higher social status. As Callahan (2004) indicated, it is in Americans’ characters that winners are admired by others regardless of their sins (p.125). This does not mean that people do not cheat any more once become winners. With all the great rewards that the Winning Class will get, it seems that the potential losses for losing is also big. People in the Anxiety Class struggle to get into the Winning Class. People in the Winning Class fight to not to lose their rewards. Cheating becomes a desired secret weapon for both of the two classes.
When talking with Lucia, she admitted that her salary is at least ten times than an ordinary programmer in her company, say nothing of her bosses at the headquarter. “This is how it works”, she said, “ not only in my company but also in almost everywhere in such economy.” She also told me that nobody in her company consider the huge income gap as unfair, they would rather see it as a motivation for them to get ahead, to become the winners. Similar situations also happened at Arthur Andersen. The less experienced auditor would do the majority of the work. They spent hours to do the endless and repetitive work. They did much more work than the partners while they got much less paid. Yet, if the project was done successfully, the full credit will also go to the partners (Toffler and Reingold, 2003, p.54).
Considering the new pressures and the bigger rewards for the winners, it is obvious to see how tempting that cheating becomes. The weaken safeguards against wrongdoings also increases temptation to cheat (Callahan, 2004, p.21). According to Callahan (2004), Federal agencies such as the SEC and the IRS, although have good standpoint, are lack of resources and time to fully investigate all the companies in the market (p.21). Moreover, in current society, economic winners seem to be in the upper class and are not governed by the same general rules as the rest. “The Winning Class can get away with cheating”, even if they got caught, most of them will get no punishment (cited in Callahan, 2004, p.22). Toffler and Reingold (2003) illustrate the special treatment winners got giving the real-life examples in Arthur Andersen. After the two accounting scandals in Sunbeam and Wasted Management uncovered, none of the auditors from Arthur Andersen went to prison, nor did they get punished. They still went to work as a partner, still lived the usual life as nothing happened and still got incredibly high salaries (p.136&p.139). Cheating is similar to gambling, but in many cases, you can get rewards when you success, whereas, differently, when you fail, you will not lose anything.
Auditors are supposed to be watchdogs for public investors. However, many auditors seem to make an alliance with their clients to mislead the public. In the early days of the firm, auditors at Arthur Andersen had the guts to say no to their clients if they considered the clients’ requests were illegal and unethical. However, in 1990s, the only goal of the auditors was to bring money in. The high audit and consulting fees were so tempting that they would do anything to make clients happy, including help them “cook books” (Toffler and Reingold, 2003, p.109). When even the public’s watchdogs turn into part of cheating, fraud becomes inevitable. It seems to be more possible for you to cheat to get ahead and less possible to be detected giving the weaken safeguards. Even if you get caught, as member in the Winning Class, you will possibly not lose a lot. Those who choose not to cheat will be left behind.
The fourth factor contributed to the cheating culture is the trickle-down corruption. Nowadays, the American dream seems to be nothing more than a dream. In this winner-take-all dynamic, winners are favored by different rules and great profit. Callahan (2004) said that when people perceive the rules as unfair to them, they would make up their own ethics and morality. They will justify their unethical behavior by blaming for the inequality around them (p.168). When seeing the winners enjoy the big rewards and how they get into the Winning Class through cheating, many of the rest justify their morality and learn to take shortcut to attain their own American dream.
Inside Arthur Andersen, even the partners, still rationalized their unethical behavior against the unfair rules. Toffler and Reingold (2003) introduced that at Arthur Andersen, the rules of how the revenues credit to each partners are absurd. Basically, the fees will go to the office that performs the work. If you are from Chicago office and you help the LA office finish the project, you and your office will not get any credit as the revenues go directly to the LA office. This absurd rule makes partners very upset and they try to figure out one way to deal with it. One of the partners finally persuades some other partners to permit him create another office that supervises the offices he is working at. Then some of the fees will credit to him. This is an unethical but genuine way to protect one’s profit he deserved. The partner rationalizes his behavior by saying that it is only a self-protection from such an absurd system (p.97). Lucia also told me that some of her employees were reluctant to hand in their taxes because they were so furious about the corruption inside Chinese government. When answering my question how she dealt with such problems, she said: “ I never cheated on taxes. I should be the example for the employees. I talked with them and told them that no matter fair or not, it is their responsibility to pay taxes. Leadership plays an important role at this time.”
Lucia emphasized a key point that leadership is crucial when dealing with ethical issues. The leadership style and the morality of leaders affect their firm and employees tremendously. Most people do not want to do wrong things. As mentioned above, it is the culture that forces people to cheat. Inside a firm, leader is one of the essential factors that influence the firm’s culture and reshape employees’ values. When I read the book Final Accounting, I was astounded to see how soulless the employees at Arthur Andersen became under the dictatorial leadership of those greed and money obsessed partners. The tradition at Arthur Andersen is to obey to the partners. Questioning to one’s superior is discouraged (Toffler and Reingold, 2003, P.64). According to Toffler and Reingold (2003), a young manager once expresses his anxiety about overbilling their clients to a partner, all he got is a furious answer: “I don’t care what you used to charge, this is the way we do things around here!” Although emphasizes on selecting the ethical persons when recruiting new people, the firm trains employees as a robot to obey superiors without questioning (p.2).
Toffler and Reingold (2003) described the leadership at Arthur Andersen as “ absent, distracted or fighting its own battles”. Money is the only goal for leaders (p.133). When preparing a proposal called “Managing Internal Ethical Risks” at Arthur Andersen, one of the authors, Barbara Ley Toffler is stumped by a problem, she does not know, nor does anyone else at the firm know, whom to report if there is an ethical problem related to auditing. Even after she hands out the proposal, she does not get any response from the partners. Leaders at Arthur Andersen never accept that they are doing wrong (p. 179). Leadership distorts the firm’s value and makes its employees to cheat without feeling ashamed. “ ‘Your employers are all looking at you’, this is what my boss told me after I became the manager” said Lucia, “My leadership style is to empower my employees, I give them enough authority to make decisions according to their virtue. One of my core values is to maintain integrity and accountability and I believe that will influence my employees as well.” In addition to the four assertions that Callahan came up with above, leadership should also be a crucial factor that affect employees’ ethical behavior.
Giving the main factors that lead to the cheating culture, the next question would be how to improve ethical behavior. I recommend that four alternatives should be taken into account: leadership, evaluation process, education and whistleblowing. As Lucia pointed out, proper leadership would help monitor wrongdoings and encourage ethical behavior. A leader should be an ethical person herself so that her employees will do the right thing if they follow her instructions. Moreover, leaders should also provide their employees enough power to question their superiors. As a leader, she should launch an ethical standard of behavior for the whole company. She should also ask each employee to establish and write down his or her own ethical standard of behavior. These are the guidelines of how to deal with ethical issues. In addition to leadership, evaluation process should also change in order to improve ethical behavior. If at Arthur Andersen financial performance was not the solely measurement of a person’s success any more, I believe that the company will not get as rotten and corrupted as it was before its bankrupt. Service quality, clients’ satisfaction and reputation should also be measurements in the evaluation process at the same scale as financial performance. Moreover, mutual evaluations should also be taken into account in order to force employees to monitor each other. A desirable evaluation process evaluates a person from many different aspects.
Another tool that would be used to encourage ethical behavior is education. Teaching students stronger ethical codes of all parts of our society would be a sustained benefit. Education of ethical codes in the firm is also necessary. Companies should include ethical training when conducting employee trainings. Company’s core values and ethic codes should not be just a slogan; it should be put into effect. Whistleblowing would also be an effective way to detect wrongdoings and improve ethical behavior. The company should establish a system to facilitate constructive whistleblowing, making sure employees know whom to talk when they uncover problems. There should be rewards for people to detect problems and punishment for people who make problems. After all, whistleblowing should be the last resort in improving the ethical behavior because it focus on solving the problems. Leadership, evaluation process and education should come first as they aim at preventing the problems.
When facing ethical dilemmas, I usually follow my personal codes of ethics, which are objectivity, integrity and accountability. When making a decision, I try my best to judge independently even when under pressure. I will think about the consequences of different decisions. I understand that only a little “lie” could lead to bigger problems. Every time when I make a decision that fulfills my personal code of ethics, I feel confident and proud and this feeling reinforces my decision. Ethics is not something to memorize, it is part of my personality. When I find myself start to rationalize my behaviors, I know there is something going wrong here and I should stop to rethink about it.
In this dynamic environment, we should practice our ethics every time we encounter ethical dilemma. Last fall, my student organization began to recruit new members. There were more than 100 applicants, but we can only recruit 20 of them. My best friend, who failed the first time she applied, decided to apply again. I was the interviewer at that time and knew all the questions we would ask during the interview. My friend desired to join AIESEC so badly that she chose to beg me to reveal the questions before she took the interview. I really wanted to help her and get her in. As an interviewer, my responsibility was to recruit people who fulfill the requirements. My team member trusted me and I needed to hold my commitment. If I chose to help her cheat, it would be unfair to others and affect the organization’s reputation. I would also feel ashamed by myself. After thinking about the possible consequences my action would cause, I refused her request. Although this affects our friendship, I will still do the same thing if give me a second chance. I insist to do the right thing to fulfill my personal code of ethics. This makes me confident and proud and I believe it will also affect other people around me.
People are not born to do wrong things. Cheating becomes prevailing because people are under tremendous pressure and the resources are so unequally distributed that they cannot meet their goals without playing tricks. However, cheating can only bring short-term benefit. Every time to cheat is like to take a brick out of a house, when the amount of bricks taken out mounting to a certain degree, the house will collapse. Thinking about the Arthur Andersen case, partners chose to cheat to attain incredibly amount of money. Nevertheless, their profit did not last long. The world once No. One accounting firm went bankrupted in only three years when many of its accounting frauds get uncovered. But optimistically, according to Callahan (2004), this cheating culture will not last forever. Like other cultural moments in the past, the cheating culture will just be part of the history (p.27). Our priority at now is to seek effective solutions to make the history move faster. In this battle against cheating, every unit of the society should unite. Government and other agencies should collaborate to create an equal opportunity for every one in this economy. Education should be implemented so that stronger ethical codes will be addressed. Most importantly, people should recognize that it is one’s obligation to behave ethically and his or her behavior will influence others greatly.

Note: Lucia Kong from Wyse Technology Inc. is a great manager I’ve ever met. Her passion, integrity and honesty inspire not only me but also her colleagues. It was a great experience to talk with her. However, unfortunately, she lives and works in Beijing, China. I do not think it is possible for her to come to the university and give a speech about her experience.

References
Callahan, D. (2004). The Cheating Culture. : Harcourt, Inc.
Toffler, B. L. & Reingold, J. (2003). Final Accounting: Ambition, greed, and the fall of Arthur Andersen. : Broadway Books.