Dr. Jerry Osteryoung Executive Director of the Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship at Florida State University

Honesty is the Best Policy

Each time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you toward greater success.  Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strong forces pushing you toward failure.  ~Joseph Sugarman

{sidebar id=1}Enron Corporation is continually in the news. The thing that disturbs me the most about this travesty is the magnitude and the scope of the dishonesty. It is incredulous to realize the number of people who knew, or should have known, that their actions were not correct and probably illegal. Yet the majority of these ethical issues were never seriously considered.

Dishonesty in corporations hits the front page, but it is prevalent in all of society.  Just the other day Stephen Ambrose, the well known author, was caught plagiarizing sections of his books The Wild Blue, Citizen Soldiers and Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1973-1990.

I think that dishonesty in our society is tolerated and in many ways encouraged. Just look at how many times the legal system gives people a chance to change before they have to go to jail.

Sometimes in my classes at various universities, I ask the students how they would respond if they got back $20 more than was due them from a restaurant cashier.  Unfortunately, the majority of students say they would keep the $20. They rationalize that the restaurant makes millions of dollars and will not miss the $20. After I get over the shock of their reaction, I have a very long talk with them about ethics and honesty.

Can I change their view of honesty?  Maybe or maybe not, but what I can do is make them aware of the ethical considerations. I think many people get themselves into problems because they just do not realize that there are ethical dimensions to their decisions.

Here is what I tell my students and entrepreneurs to ask themselves if they are getting into an ethical quagmire:

1.    What would your mother say about this action?
2.    How would you feel if your action appeared on the front page of the Tallahassee Democrat?
3.    Is it illegal?

If you have the uh-oh feeling about your action from these questions, then you are in an ethical dilemma. I believe that just being aware of an ethical issue will help you to better analyze and deal with the situation.

The top 1% of all salesmen were interviewed and asked to identify the most important attribute for their success?  Was it:

a.    Their character,
b.    Their wit,
c.    Their products/services,
d.    Their motivation, or
e.    Their honesty?

Without question, the most important attribute to this top group of salesmen was honesty. They clearly understood that, for customers to have a relationship with them, the customer needed to trust them. This trust is only earned through consistently honest relations. Most people want to have relationships with only honest people. Just ask someone whether he or she would prefer to get a 10% discount on a product dealing with a dishonest business or to pay the normal price to an honest company?   

{sidebar id=1}I believe that honesty is one of the most important considerations in being an entrepreneur. Employees, customers, and vendors cannot trust you if you are dishonest. We have been jaded by so much dishonesty in our public lives (e.g., President Clinton and President Nixon) that sometimes we learn to tolerate dishonesty and sometimes to even expect it.

Honesty is the virtue you should most desire for your company.  Tallahassee’s Downtown Rotary Club each year seeks out the best ethically sound business in this area.  I applaud their effort to raise the awareness of ethics and honesty throughout our community.

When our kids were much younger I went to an ATM machine. It either gave me too much money or the previous customer had left some money in the money dispenser drawer. When I saw this, I took it into the bank with the kids in tow and returned it. Our children still talk about this experience with pride; however, what really felt great about this experience was that I knew that I had been true to myself.

Is being honest easy? No! But honesty brings tremendous dividends. I promise you that, if you make a significant effort to be honest, it will bring rewards simply because you will feel so much better about yourself.

Honesty is the only policy!

You can do this!

Jerry Osteryoung is the Director of Outreach of the Jim Moran Institute for Global Entrepreneurship in the College of Business at Florida State University, the Jim Moran Professor of Entrepreneurship; and Professor of Finance. He was the founding Executive Director of the Jim Moran Institute and served in that position from 1995 through 2008. He can be reached by e-mail at jerry.osteryoung@gmail.com or by phone at 850-644-3372. All of Dr. Osteryoung's articles can be found in a searchable form at www.cob.fsu.edu/jmi .

This article originally published on December 2, 2008.

Click here to discuss this article in our Online Discussion Forums.

Per Wakulla.com policy, all reader comments (submitted below) must include a valid first and last name.

Written by :

mkwestmark

 

Comments (0)

You must be logged in to post a comment.