Reflecting on Career Ethics: A Lighthearted Look at a Unique Mentoring Experience

In the journey of our professional lives, we often find ourselves navigating the murky waters of ethics, especially when faced with unconventional challenges. Recently, I found myself reminiscing about a particularly amusing yet ethically questionable situation during my time volunteering as a mentor for a high school Junior Achievement team.

Building a Business: The Reality of Restrictions

As mentors to a group of enthusiastic 11th graders, my fellow associates and I were tasked with guiding them through the process of running a small business for approximately three months. The students decided to embark on the venture of selling fruit baskets. We planned to purchase fruit in bulk, assemble delightful baskets, and deliver them to homes in our community.

However, Junior Achievement imposed strict guidelines—particularly that the business could not incur any debt. While this rule undoubtedly aimed to cultivate financial responsibility, it posed a significant challenge. In practical terms, avoiding debt meant we couldn’t take on any liabilities, raising a critical question: How could we secure funding to purchase our fruit without creating obligations?

Creative Solutions: A Playful Interpretation of Rules

With no viable financial route available, we cleverly devised a workaround that may raise a few eyebrows—the idea of prepaying for the fruit baskets. Essentially, we collected funds upfront when customers placed orders, allowing us to then purchase the necessary ingredients without technically taking on debt. From a business perspective, this approach was effective and yielded quick results.

However, this is where the humor in our ethical dilemma comes into play. Each week, our team was required to submit financial reports to the Junior Achievement office, detailing our business progress. If we documented our cash collections and the funds received for future deliveries, we risked drawing scrutiny and possibly disapproval from the organization.

The Two Sets of Books Dilemma

It was under this backdrop that we unintentionally found ourselves maintaining two sets of financial records—one that reflected the true state of our business activities and another to submit for review, which we affectionately termed our “audited” version. What started as a pragmatic solution evolved into a quirky realization as we pondered our two-book system during a casual discussion a few weeks into the project.

At that moment, we understood the implications of our actions—both practical and ethically ambiguous. Yet, with just a few weeks to go and the project running smoothly, we decided to carry on with our dual Accounting methods.