The Prevalence and Nature of Cheating
Mr. Santos is not the only cheater in the world. There is a big market for cheating in our mid-21st Century world. Frankly, we have all done some cheating in our life. It might have been nothing more than fudging a bit when reporting expenses on our income tax forms. Perhaps, we were lying a bit and were not totally honest when asked by a colleague to judge their performance during a workshop we were conducting together. We might even have oversold our services a smidge. We might have estimated a bit high on our anticipated revenues when completing a business plan for submission to our local bank for startup capital. Our meeting with a former girlfriend or boyfriend might not have been reported to our spouse. These are what we identify as Soft Cheats—accompanied by Soft Lies.
There are of course the Hard Cheats and the Hard Lies. These take place when we lie about our expenses in filling out a tax form. They are to be found in the affairs some men and women have had outside their committed relationships. We find hard cheats in the briberies that are associated with seeking to influence the formal judgments made about an ice skating or diving performance. The hard cheat is quite a different matter from the soft cheat. Soft lies may be common and even excusable. Hard lies are another matter. They challenge our very notion of ethics and social morality.
When talking about writing this article with several of our coaching colleagues, there is often a very quick and often emotional reaction: DO NOT coach someone who we know has cheated and CEASE to coach someone when we find out that they have been cheating in a big way [hard cheat]!” We wonder if this is the only viable (and ethical) outcome of a potential or ongoing coaching relationship when cheating is discovered or revealed. Is there a role to be played by a skilled and experienced professional coach in this quite challenging setting? In this essay, we have devoted some attention to describing the dynamics of cheating and turn to ways in which one might work with a cheater as a coach (or therapist or counsellor).
What Comprises Cheating?
We propose that all cheating involves three components. First, there must be some purposeful lying. The truth is not being told—and it is not being told for some specific reason. We tell our spouse that we are going shopping when in fact we are meeting with our former boyfriend or girlfriend. The purpose? We don’t’ want to hurt our spouses’ feelings or we don’t want our spouse to insist that we quit seeing our former boyfriend or girlfriend. Many of our reported expenses actually were for personal travel and some books we purchased for leisure reading. The reason we are lying is that we don’t want to pay more than necessary in taxes.
There is an important observation to make about purposeful lying. We often find that one lie leads to a second and third lie. We need to lie about not lying. Our fabricated shopping trip requires that we lie about what we bought or lie about not finding what we were looking for. Lying is contagious. A lie rarely exists in isolation. The purpose of the second and third lie is to cover up for the first lie. Purposeful lying can be quite contagious!
Second, there must be some violation of formal norms (laws, regulations) or informal norms (courtesy, etiquette, codes of civility). Our marriage vows or shared commitments regarding monogamy were being violated. The laws regarding the reporting of business expenses on a Schedule C form were not being respected. When cheating, we have become “outlaws.” The crime can be domestic in nature, or it can be public. In any case, we are violators and are in some sense renegades who are “running away from the law [social norm]!” Our purpose, in other words, is counter to a broader purpose—namely the need for social order, moral conduct and a sense of personal responsibility.
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