A Lesson in Ethics: When Mentorship Went Awry

In the realm of professional life, we often find ourselves navigating complex ethical dilemmas. One amusing, albeit questionable situation emerged while I was mentoring a local Junior Achievement team. My fellow associates and I volunteered to guide high school students in the creation and operation of a small business, a practical experience designed to teach valuable entrepreneurial skills.

Our project involved selling fruit baskets. The students were responsible for sourcing bulk fruit, assembling the baskets, and delivering them to customers in our community. While the initiative had great potential, it was hampered by a critical rule set forth by Junior Achievement: the business could not accrue any debt.

On the surface, this regulation appeared to safeguard the organization. However, in practice, it presented a significant challenge. Without the ability to incur liabilities, we were at a loss for how to purchase the necessary fruit inventory. The logical question arose: how could we acquire products without upfront funds, and how could we secure those funds without violating the no-debt policy?

In a moment of creative problem-solving, we decided to collect prepayments from our customers for the fruit baskets. This approach not only allowed us to fund our purchases but also generated cash flow for the business. While this strategy was effective from a financial perspective, it led us down a slippery slope of ethical ambiguity.

As part of our mentorship, we were required to compile weekly financial reports to submit to the Junior Achievement office. However, if we accurately recorded our cash collections and deferred revenue, we knew the organization would disapprove. To maintain our internal operations while still fulfilling our reporting obligations, we accidentally fell into the practice of maintaining two sets of financial records. We had one “real” set to track our transactions and another set to present to the Junior Achievement officials.

After several weeks of operating this way, a realization struck us during a casual conversation: we were, indeed, keeping two separate sets of books! Faced with the choice of correcting course or continuing a system that was clearly working, we opted to maintain our dual record-keeping until the project concluded.

This experience not only served as a humorous anecdote in our professional journey but also highlighted the importance of ethics in business operations. While we navigated this challenge in a light-hearted manner, it ultimately reinforced the significance of transparency and accountability in any enterprise.

In retrospect, mentoring the Junior Achievement team was an invaluable experience, full of unexpected lessons about ethics, creativity, and the complexities of business