‘What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?’
Adam Smith
During one of my business management classes that I teach to international students, I assigned the task to discuss two business concepts such as strategy and innovation in reference to one or two companies which the students are familiar with. They could choose any multinational company, for example, Apple, Microsoft or Google, or a small mom-and-pop store that they pass by on the way back home from school. They could also choose to write about their family business or the company their parents work for.
One of the Korean students asked me, if making up answers during the final exam is ‘OK’. The final exam determines whether the high-school students get admissions to colleges of their choice. The student who brought up this question of ethics wanted to write about an imaginative company instead of a real one, despite the fact that the examining committee had asked in the assessment criteria for a real-life organization.
The student assumed that it would be very difficult for outside examiners, who mark the final exams, to find out whether the company which the student wrote about is indeed a real one or a fake one. Unless he made some obvious mistakes that uncover his unethical plot after which the examining committee starts an investigation, then he would not supposed to be in any troubles.
He wanted to know my personal opinion whether bending the reality in this kind of situation would be fine, and asked what he should do.
I told the student right away that it is not honest to cheat. Because it is not only lying to the examining committee that the company he was talking about is not a real company, but, it is also lying to many other people including: university admission offices, parents who will be impatiently waiting for his son’s exam results, classmates who will compare final results among each other, and finally lying to himself.
He would be gaining unjustified advantage over other students. Because, it takes hours, maybe days for other students to research information about the company they base their answers on. It is simply unfair to gain extra benefits. If you want to be a good person, you need to be good to others as well.
What is more, when in college, that student would not have clear conscious. Imagine that the student gets admission into one of the best universities in the world such as Harvard University, Yale University or University of Oxford. He would be studying together with others who achieved better results than him, and he would be constantly thinking that he cheated just to be in the place where he should not be from the very beginning because it is not his level.
He would feel bad about himself when he grows older. Dishonesty would finally hunt him down one day, maybe after a couple of decades even. One day, when he decides to be a better person, he would be helpless to change his past. He would always think about what he had done when he was younger.
I recommended to the student that he should put more real effort and hard work into studying in details about the real company of his choice. I explained that I do not accept or support any sort of unethical behavior in my classroom.
Given the above reasons, I hope that my other students also understood that having clear conscious for the rest of their lives is worth so much more than scoring a few more points on the high-school final exam.
