The Honest Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone--Especially Ourselves

I started wondering if the problem of dishonesty goes deeper than just a few bad apples and if this kind of wishful blindness takes place in other companies as well.

we can try to shorten the distance between our actions and the money in question.

overstating billable hours by economic consultants.

I was surprised by the increase in cheating that came with being one small step removed from money. As it turns out, people are more apt to be dishonest in the presence of nonmonetary objects—such as pencils and tokens—than actual money.

He also noted that in weighing the costs versus the benefits, there was no place for consideration of right or wrong; it was simply about the comparison of possible positive and negative outcomes.

What if you had to sign it just before filling out your expense reports?

each of us has a limit to how much we can cheat before it becomes absolutely “sinful.”

I believe that all of us continuously try to identify the line where we can benefit from dishonesty without damaging our own self-image.

These results suggest that once someone (or some organization) does us a favor, we become partial to anything related to the giving party—and that the magnitude of this bias increases as the magnitude of the initial favor (in this case the amount of payment) increases.