Losing It! Behaviors and Mindsets that Ruin Careers: Lessons on Protecting Yourself from Avoidable Mistakes

2. The Integrity Trap and Opportunity

Cheats and Freaks and Sneaks and Sleazes—and Good Guys Who Tiptoe into the Gray Zone

Deliberate and calculated dishonesty, stealing, and sleaziness are behaviors we can all piously condemn as we rend our garments Pharisee style. It makes us feel good or at least superior to evil cheaters. But are these people born rotten? Is anyone? Maybe. But Hitler, in Mein Kampf, recounts feeding starving mice crumbs of bread from his own meager food in his youth—mostly out of amusement, but at least partly out of pity and empathy. How did he get from there to...wherever?

The cesspool that was Enron has been overchronicled, but are we to believe that these Wharton, Harvard, and Columbia 25-year-old super-achiever energy ...