Are you really ethical? Let's find out. | Kelly Richmond Pope

Kelly Richmond Pope, a forensic accountant, shares a simple test that puts your ethics under the spotlight.

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What would you be willing to do if you thought you’d get away with it? Kelly Richmond Pope, a forensic accountant, delves into how we often unintentionally ignore our moral compasses and veer into unethical behavior when possible consequences are intangible. Kelly says we do this mainly by convincing ourselves that everyone else behaves similarly. But is that true?

She shares the results of an ethics survey she uses in her class, where her students found themselves divided about whether a social lunch with a colleague, discussing personal and work matters, should be expensed as a work-related activity. She also shares her experience of accidentally receiving an extra handbag and how different people advised her to proceed.

Maybe we’re all a little unethical. But Kelly assures that there’s no need to panic. She believes that acknowledging these vulnerabilities and implementing internal controls can help us prevent unethical behavior. Fostering an environment of self-awareness and accountability can help us all make better decisions in the future.

Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/series/devils-advocate/are-you-really-ethical/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description

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About Kelly Richmond Pope:
Dr. Kelly Richmond Pope is the Dr. Barry Jay Epstein Endowed Professor of Accounting at DePaul University in Chicago, IL. Pope is a nationally recognized expert in risk, forensic accounting, and white-collar crime research, and an award-winning educator, researcher, author, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. She’s the author of Fool Me Once: Scams, Stories, and Secrets from the Trillion Dollar Fraud Industry (Harvard Business Review Press, March 2023). Pope teaches managerial and forensic accounting both at the undergraduate and graduate level.

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Read more of our stories on ethics:
Thinking fast and slow about ethics: When is it okay to cut in line?
► https://bigthink.com/thinking/thinking-fast-slow-rule-breaking/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description
If an AI-trained surgical robot kills a patient, who is to blame?
► https://bigthink.com/the-future/ai-surgical-robot/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description
What sort of ethics would aliens practice?
► https://bigthink.com/thinking/alien-ethics-321700/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=youtube_description

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