NPR posted this fantastic article about how “good” people end up committing fraud. I like to think of myself as a good person and more importantly a helpful person. This has made me much more aware of how vulnerable I might be to committing fraud without ever intending to do so. So of course the question that follows is, how do I keep myself in check? How do you balance your want to be a good and useful public servant against rules and regulations?
I think for me the first thing I always try to keep in mind is that the tax payers are paying for me to be here doing what I do, and part of what I do is to protect their interest. Not only do I want every other public servant to do that for me (given that I also am a tax paying citizen), but it reminds me to be transparent and deliberate with my actions.
My boss has a simple rule of thumb: imagine if what you do today ends up as the headline of tomorrow’s paper. Will it reflect well or poorly given the public thirst for scandal?
Right! I was just amazed at how many people were willing to bend the rules to help this fellow along in his crime… that no one along the way said “hey – you really shouldn’t be doing this and as much as I would like to help you, I can’t because it’s wrong.”
Not to get too ethereal, but this is what I think about in terms of maintaining integrity:
Nothing we do in darkness stays in the dark. Light will always prevail in the end. Light wants to work its way through even the smallest cracks and reveal the truth. We can either operate in the dark for a time, knowing the light will find its way eventually…or we can throw open our work to the light of transparency and work hard to make it worthy of scrutiny and recognition…and build trust in the process.