What is Your Integrity Worth?
By Stephen Shepherd, Marketing –
If someone were to offer to put you in the driver’s seat of a Porsche, would you be tempted? A top Chinese official was offered this very bribe, and many others, to compromise his integrity.
My older sister once tried to bribe me to do a portion of her chores for a “shiny penny.” As the bright, clever young boy that I was, I knew better than that. Had she offered me a dollar, I might have reconsidered her offer. The larger the bribe, the more likely I would have been to acquiesce to her request.
Reform Director Needs to Reform
It appears Chinese official Liu Tienan was on the same wavelength with respect to big payoffs. Tienan is the former deputy director of the Chinese National Development and Reform Commission. This entity is “in charge of steering the world’s second largest economy.” Tienan recently confessed to taking at least $5.8 million in bribes, which could land him in prison for 10 years to life, if convicted. President Xi Jinping’s anti-graft campaign has already weeded out several offending officials, but few are as high-ranking as Tienan.
The Scale of Temptation
To what extent would you consider accepting a bribe if it was a Porsche? How about a Beijing villa or millions of dollars in cash? These were some of the bribes that captivated and convinced Tienan.
The bribes offered to Tienan were large scale, and so was what he had to lose.
By accepting these bribes, he acted in direct violation of an ethical code agreed upon after being appointed the authority and granted the privileges associated with leading the people of China. Not only did he harm the people he was supposed to serve, but he also tainted the prestige of his office and destroyed his career.
Fighting Corruption — One Person at a Time
Despite the multilevel nature of corruption, it boils down to a question of integrity on a very personal level.
Bribes in government or in the workplace are not limited to highly ranked officials; they can penetrate all levels of an organization if the proper avoidance procedures are not effectively implemented. We must seek out the most trustworthy of candidates to fill positions of leadership, especially knowing that their integrity (and consequently, that of the organization) could depend on a bribe worth considerably more than a few “shiny pennies.”
In our opinion, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Converus’ Eye Detect™ is the latest development in lie detection software, and its implementation will prevent corruption from getting out of hand, thereby limiting harm to an organization’s integrity, financial resources and reputation.
