VIR-III-0035
“No one checks the expense reports and I'm tempted to pad mine.”
The system trusts you. A few extra dollars, a personal lunch coded as business, invisible, untraceable, everyone-probably-does-it. That's exactly the shape of the test. It's not about the money, which is small. It's about whether your honesty depends on being watched. A man who steals when no one's looking has already decided who he is. Decide better.
Your Practice
- Submit only what's true. The smallness of the fudge is what makes it a clean test of you.
- Notice the rationalization forming, 'everyone does it', and refuse it.
- Remember the padded report would cost you the right to feel honest. Not worth the lunch.
- Let unwatched honesty in small things be the proof of your standard.
The Architects
“The strength of a man's virtue must not be measured by his efforts, but by his ordinary life.”
Blaise Pascal, Pensées, fragment 352 (Brunschvicg), Section VI "The Philosophers", W. F. Trotter translation