How to Get Ahead: Lie and Cheat?

post # 197 — September 22, 2006 — a Careers post

Steve Shu brought my attention to a fascinating article reporting on a study of 5,000 MBA students from 11 graduate business schools in Canada and 21 schools in the U.S.

The study is entitled “Academic Dishonesty in Graduate Business Programs: The Prevalence, Causes, and Proposed Actions”. It was conducted by management professors at Rutgers, Washington State and Pennsylvania State universities, and will appear in the next issue of the Academy of Management Learning & Education journal.

The study found that 56 per cent of graduate business students admitted to cheating in the last year, compared with 47 per cent of non-business students.

Jim Fisher, vice-dean of MBA programs at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, said he wasn’t surprised by the results, since MBA students are highly competitive and have a high need for achievement.

To dampen the impulse to cheat, students at Rotman must sign a form every time they submit course work for grading to ensure they comply with academic honesty policies. When MBA students work in teams, they also must sign forms stating that they didn’t cheat, nor did their teammates.

“Those numbers are probably under-reported,” said Donald McCabe, lead researcher on the study and business strategy professor at

Rutgers. Since the survey was voluntary, more dishonest students were less likely to fill out the survey, and those who did complete it may have under-reported how much they cheated, McCabe said.

The study suggested that MBA students were more likely to cheat than others because they were focused on “getting the job done, versus how they got it done. They will suggest, in the business world the emphasis is on getting the job done at any cost.”

“There is also employer pressure to get high marks,” Larry Wynant of the University of western Ontario said. “The past few years there has been tremendous pressure to get jobs, because the employment outlook has not been as rosy (for MBA graduates) as in the past.”

I read this at the same time that that the “20-something” daughter of some good friends was telling us about her new job as a personal assistant in the world of public relations. She pointed out, with great discomfort, that it was not unusual for her boss to say “I worked on the XYZ account for 4 hours but bill them for 20.” There’s even a word for this form of lying in PR firms, accounting firms, consulting firms and law firms: “value billing.”

I have no problem billing a client BY AGREEMENT on what a project was worth, but the casual acceptance of lies astonishes me.

We have crossed over into dangerous territory. When there is the normal expectation that most other people will cheat (given the opportunity) things WILL rapidly descend into the expectation that everyone will. We then have a distrustful, society based on the expectation of corruption — and everyone becomes super-defensive.

I won’t say I have never, ever sinned, especially when I was young and stupid. But what kept me on the true path was the overwhelming sense of guilt and the consequent vow that I would never lapse again. It is one thing to succumb to temptation. It is another to give up one’s very belief in principles and pass that cynicism and skepticism on to those around us and to those who report to us.

What happens if, in school and in the first job, we raise a generation of people who think lying, cheating and stealing are the ways you get ahead?