Do you believe you have strong ethics? You probably do. Just about everyone answers “yes” to that question. If you think about it, that’s a problem.
“The comment we hear most often is, ‘I’m ethical, it’s everyone else I’m worried about.’ That can’t be true of everyone,” says Mark Pastin, CEO of the Council of Ethical Organizations. He’s spent the past 30 years advising companies and governments about ethics.
Pastin says most people are too forgiving when considering their own ethics. “It’s one of the home fields for self-deception,” he says. That’s especially dangerous for someone running a small business.