Answers to the Quiz

Fraud Awareness Quiz – Question 3

What percentage of employees do you consider to be totally honest?

Question 3 invites delegates to explore their perceptions of the fundamental concept of honesty and to compare these perceptions with the brutal reality of how people actually behave in practice. And the answer is indeed brutal. Based upon the research, no more than 10% of employees (that is to say, the total workforce of directors, managers and staff) in any organisation may be relied upon to be totally honest.

There is always a lot of discussion and interest around this question on my courses and I have set out below the main points that have been raised by delegates over the years.

The first thing to say is that during the early stages of the discussion I am often asked by a delegate to clarify what I mean by the phrase “totally honest”.This is a good question and I always give the same reply: we are looking here specifically at honesty in the context of the workplace. That is to say, we are looking at the framework provided by the employer/employee contract: each employee receives a salary or wage in return for working a stipulated number of hours for the employer, during which time he or she will perform certain agreed activities and tasks. This is the basic contract of employment that all people working for an organisation will be familiar with. Most organisations will underpin their contracts of employment with various internal rules and systems that the ...

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