Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Mistakes Were Made
Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. (Harcourt, 2007)
I like the ending of the book, a quote from Lao Tsu:
“A great nation is like a great man: when he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers.”
Mistakes Were Made tells us about all of us who have failed to learn this lesson from the great master. At first, Tavris suggests we might be hard-wired, mentally, to deny the ethical truths which we face daily. Politicians cherry pick among security data to justify their aggressions. Politicians pontificate righteously about corporate ethics or moral causes, then wallow in sexual dalliances with their backs turned to family and friends.
“It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t me,” pervades our society.
“I didn’t cheat on the test, the exam, the SAT or the AP test.”
“I didn’t lie about my income, the appraisal or the rating of the subprime-backed security.”
Pete Rose said he didn’t wager on the baseball game. He and his friends still hope he can sneak through the back door into the Baseball Hall of Fame, even with his final admission of guilt.
Jamie Cayne of Bear Sterns, according to a Fortune article, had the choice of being forthright with his investor clients or protecting the reputation of his firm -– and he lost both in the final analysis.
A financial executive at a governance/director training session listed the rationalizations used by those found guilty of cooking the books in cases he’d supervised in the post Sarbanes-Oxley environment. The excuses are exactly the same ones used to justify sports doping and illicit gambling, infidelity, vice, fraud and other cons:
“Everybody else is doing it.”
“I have to do it to be competitive.”
“Nobody really cares.”
“Nobody will get hurt.”
“The rules are unclear.”
“No one will find out.”
“If I keep lying, no one will find out.”
“They will never be able to prove it.”
“Nothing will happen if I get caught.”
“Disclosure would hurt the company.”
I like to post these reminders prominently for those board members who might need an occasional reminder of what “mistakes in the making” look like at the beginning.
The one statement that is missing from this list is the most insidious because it is the legal training wheels used to prepare today’s generation for justifying malfeasance:
“While neither admitting nor denying any wrong-doing, Mr. X settled with Agency Y and paid Z dollars in fines.”
I call this the NANDAW defense which translates directly into: “Mistakes were made, but not by me. AND I can buy my way out of this lie.”
I like the ending of the book, a quote from Lao Tsu:
“A great nation is like a great man: when he makes a mistake, he realizes it. Having realized it, he admits it. Having admitted it, he corrects it. He considers those who point out his faults as his most benevolent teachers.”
Mistakes Were Made tells us about all of us who have failed to learn this lesson from the great master. At first, Tavris suggests we might be hard-wired, mentally, to deny the ethical truths which we face daily. Politicians cherry pick among security data to justify their aggressions. Politicians pontificate righteously about corporate ethics or moral causes, then wallow in sexual dalliances with their backs turned to family and friends.
“It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t me,” pervades our society.
“I didn’t cheat on the test, the exam, the SAT or the AP test.”
“I didn’t lie about my income, the appraisal or the rating of the subprime-backed security.”
Pete Rose said he didn’t wager on the baseball game. He and his friends still hope he can sneak through the back door into the Baseball Hall of Fame, even with his final admission of guilt.
Jamie Cayne of Bear Sterns, according to a Fortune article, had the choice of being forthright with his investor clients or protecting the reputation of his firm -– and he lost both in the final analysis.
A financial executive at a governance/director training session listed the rationalizations used by those found guilty of cooking the books in cases he’d supervised in the post Sarbanes-Oxley environment. The excuses are exactly the same ones used to justify sports doping and illicit gambling, infidelity, vice, fraud and other cons:
“Everybody else is doing it.”
“I have to do it to be competitive.”
“Nobody really cares.”
“Nobody will get hurt.”
“The rules are unclear.”
“No one will find out.”
“If I keep lying, no one will find out.”
“They will never be able to prove it.”
“Nothing will happen if I get caught.”
“Disclosure would hurt the company.”
I like to post these reminders prominently for those board members who might need an occasional reminder of what “mistakes in the making” look like at the beginning.
The one statement that is missing from this list is the most insidious because it is the legal training wheels used to prepare today’s generation for justifying malfeasance:
“While neither admitting nor denying any wrong-doing, Mr. X settled with Agency Y and paid Z dollars in fines.”
I call this the NANDAW defense which translates directly into: “Mistakes were made, but not by me. AND I can buy my way out of this lie.”
# posted by ChampionBoards.com @ 5:20 PM 
