The Ethical Gray: A Comedic Tale From My Career Journey

In the professional world, we often find ourselves faced with dilemmas that challenge our ethical boundaries. While we strive for integrity, sometimes the absurdities of real-life situations lead us to make questionable choices—albeit unintentionally. Here’s a light-hearted recounting of one such episode during my time mentoring high school students in a Junior Achievement program.

As part of my role, a group of second- and third-year associates volunteered to guide a team of ambitious high school students through a hands-on business experience. Their objective was straightforward: establish a small business, operate it for a few months, and gather valuable insights along the way.

Our team chose to create a fruit basket business. The idea was simple—purchase bulk fruit and baskets, assemble them, and deliver these delightful packages to local homes. However, we quickly discovered that Junior Achievement had enacted several rules designed to foster sound financial practices among the students, one of which was particularly restrictive: taking on debt was strictly prohibited.

While I understood the value of this rule—especially in a learning environment—it posed a significant challenge. Essentially, we were not allowed to have any liabilities, which complicates the fundamental mechanics of running a business. How could we buy the fruit necessary for our baskets without upfront cash? And how could we procure those funds without incurring debt?

The answer? We devised a clever workaround: requiring our customers to prepay their orders. We solicited orders for the fruit baskets, collected the payments upon order placement, and scheduled deliveries for a couple of weeks later. From a business perspective, this strategy was surprisingly effective!

Now, here comes the ethically questionable twist. Part of the requirements for the program involved submitting weekly financial reports to the Junior Achievement office. Knowing that showing our cash collections and deferred revenue would raise red flags and displease the organization, we faced a dilemma. We needed a way to track who had paid us while maintaining a façade of compliance with the rules.

Unintentionally, this led us to keep two sets of financial records. One was our “real” set—used solely for managing our operations—and the other was the sanitized version we submitted for review. Even more amusingly, we had the students involved in this dual record-keeping!

After a few weeks into the project, we casually recognized the absurdity of maintaining two ledgers. Realizing that our clever hack was working and there were only a few weeks left to the project