Third, there is actual harm or potential harm being done to someone or something. The reason why we are cheating (our purpose) is assigned higher priority than the harm to be done. Cheating is never “harmless” – at least not from a broad perspective. Even though the person with whom we are living an intimate life may never find out about our “secret” date (or affair), the nature of our relationship with this person with whom we have made a “commitment” will never quite be the same. It will lose some of its depth and this does harm to the person we “love.” Ultimately, our government is “harmed” when we deny them access to revenue that they “deserve.” While we are only one taxpayer and the lost revenue is miniscule (when compared to the entire national budget), it all adds up and citizens of our nation are “harmed” when they cannot receive critical social services because of a deficit budget.
The Structure of Cheating
When defining the nature and scope of cheating, we can specifically focus on four dimensions. These are size, frequency, type and cost. All four make a big difference when addressing ways in which to confront this challenging behavior.
How Big a Cheat
We have already distinguished between soft and hard cheats but can move beyond this general judgment by engaging our three criteria.
How Big a Lie: The first criterion concerns the violation of truth. The question aligned with this first criterion is: How big a lie has been told or how many associated lies have been conveyed? The size of the lie and number of lies being told are relative. Within a family, it doesn’t take a very big lie or many related lies to be considered a big cheat, whereas in a corporate setting, the lie may need to be a “whopper” and a whole cluster of lies must be engaged for it to be consider “big” as a cheat.
One sexual affair can have a profound impact on a family, whereas it appears that one affair in a corporation usually doesn’t even ripple the water. A corporate tax report is complicated and is subject to many modifications that can impact on the corporation’s reporting of income. Given its complicated nature, the corporate tax report might contain many more “minor” falsehoods that would be “major” if contained on a personal tax return.
It is particularly important to consider the “contagion” factor. How many associated lies are being told. The corporate tax return might not only be complicated—it might also be complex (meaning that many components of the tax report are interdependent) (Miller and Page, 2007). Thus, an overestimation of overseas travel expenses might have to be accompanied by a false report regarding the amount of oversees sales that is contained in a report to stakeholders (stockholders, financial institutions, potential investors, etc.)
Similarly, it is rare that an affair is a one-time event–and it is rare that an affair occurs without some accompanying lies about time away from home, expenses for which there is not easy accounting, and a shift in the frequency and intensity of intimate relations with the partner back home. Lies can indeed be contagious and the extent of their spread is critical.
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