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Would You Cross The Line?

What is it about a juicy business ethics scandal that grabs so many headlines?

Partly, it's a guilty pleasure — it's hard to look away when corrupt corporations or high-profile chief executives get busted in public. We boil over with righteous anger (if not a little jealousy) when power players score eight or nine–figure paydays at the expense of countless "little people" who wind up broke, dead or terminally ill.

Ethical horror stories like these can be instructive, but they're also dangerous.

The bigger the scandal, the more imaginary distance it puts between the perpetrator and the small choices the average person makes on a daily basis. Who's going to be hurt by that extra ten bucks on the expense report? It's not like we're jetting off to the Caribbean with a widow's life savings. Most of us would never consider crossing an ethical line like that.              Read more