I’m not hurting anyone. Everyone does it. Anyway, what others do is so much worse. No one is going to notice. What’s the big deal, anyway?

We all cut corners, bend the law a little, cheat every now and then.  Maybe we pad the numbers to meet the quarterly targets. Copy someone else’s essay. Substitute a lower-cost product to save a few dollars. Skip some parts of the employee training to fill a position that’s been vacant too long. 

It’s normal, right? 

Consider this

Most people don’t recognize the name Jordan Belfort. But they recognize the movie made about his life: The Wolf of Wall Street. Jordan was the real man that movie depicted. 

How did he come to be called the Wolf of Wall Street? How did he end up in jail for fraud, stock market manipulation, and for scamming his clients out of their savings? 

In his words: One step at a time. 

“Once you cross the ethical line, the line moves,” he said. “It’s one gigantic rationalization.” You say to yourself, I’ll do it just this once.  “And then your ethical line moves, and next time, you step further. You’ve become desensitized. Once you’re so deep in things, the abnormal seems normal and the normal seems like a distant memory.”

Putting into play 

What small first step do you take that leads you down a chain of events that end up in an ethical quagmire? That’s the top of the slippery slope, a question (and book title) posed by author and psychologist Pippa Grange. 

Seemingly small, innocuous actions, Pippa says, pave the way to larger less undesirable actions. 

Yet every time we get away with one small breach, it leads us to the next. 

The slippery slope is slippery, because humans are very good at justifying their actions. 

We compare ourselves to others, saying, everyone does it. So-and-so is way worse. 

We minimize the chances of getting caught: No one will know. It’s just this once. Yet the act is no less unethical simply because you got away with it.

This rationalization weighs our actions in precisely the wrong way. It looks at probability, the likelihood of getting caught, but fails to consider consequences.

Considering the consequences means asking yourself, “If the worst does happen, can I live with it?”  There may be a very remote chance of getting caught, of someone being hurt, of your action coming to light. But if it does happen, can you bear it?

If someone does get harmed, can you live with yourself knowing you caused that? 

If you lose your relationship, will you be able to tolerate that? 

If you lose your job, or your reputation gets injured, would you think it was a risk worth taking? 

At the moment, it all seems harmless enough, easy in fact. But only because we’re ignoring our future self, the part of us who has to live with the consequences of our recklessness.