Honesty in the Business World

Honesty in the Business World

Honesty in our daily life should be our most important value. Dishonesty in the can be found in every corner of our lives. It can be found in our government, our companies, and even our families. Maintaining honest attributes in our lives is difficult in a world that is full of corruption, lies, and secrets. Because of these traits those who are honest stand above the crowd. Your honest behavior may inspire others to stand up with you or cause others to try and look down on you for your honesty. The only true person that you have control of their honesty and integrity is yourself. John D. MacDonald gave this inspiring quote,” Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will.” Having an honest reputation is a great motivator for people and companies to put faith in your dealings. Having a dishonest reputation is the fastest way to lose peoples faith. Honesty is such a vague term for what honesty is. I believe can be broken down in to three smaller groups; internal business honesty, external business honesty and personal honesty.

Internal business honesty consists of honesty inside your company. It seems to be a common form of dishonesty but with the harshest consequences. This category isn’t telling your boss that his suit looks nice today. It is issues like lying on your resumes, making up references, making assertions about others, withholding information, feigning sickness, covering up a failed project mistake or missed deadline, stealing company time or falsifying expense reports. All of these are used for personal gain and hurt the whole. Committing any of these dishonest actions can severely hurt your career.

Often in the work force employees and even employers do these acts without a second thought. Many of these are used in their daily lives or were used growing up. It can start as a child feigning sickness to get a day off of school. When they grow up, they fake a sick day and get a day off work. If someone gossips about their neighbors at home they probably gossip about their coworkers. In the short time that I have spent in the work place I have seen a few major cases of these dishonest acts. A fellow coworker of mine had been stealing company time. He was found surfing the web every morning the hour before his fellow office workers would arrive. After he was accused, he denied but shortly after he gave his resignation. The fact that he lied about not doing it made the situation much worse for him. There was plenty of proof that he didn’t know we had. I would know I installed the program that tracked him. Another instance I can think of involved feigning sickness was when I was high school. There was a calling center that employed a huge number of my fellow students and me for a short while. The work wasn’t fun and soon the company was receiving numerous calls a day about there employees being deathly ill and unable to come in to work. One day when a large number of the staff was ill we received an announcement informing us that any one with more then one sick day would be let go. Shortly after I gave my two weeks notice because all my friends had been fired. Even in situations that don’t end in resignation or termination. Often an employer will not consider the guilty party for advancements in the company. Dishonesty leaves a mark that often can’t be removed easily.

Continuing on to External business