Reflecting on the Ethical Dilemmas of Mentoring Young Entrepreneurs
In the world of business, ethical challenges can arise in unexpected places. I’d like to share a humorous yet thought-provoking experience from a mentorship program in which I participated, focusing on a Junior Achievement team composed of high school students.
My colleagues and I, who were mid-career associates, volunteered to guide this group as they embarked on a project to launch a simulated small business. The objective was straightforward: envision a business, execute a plan, and operate it over a few months. Our team chose the delightful concept of selling fruit baskets. They would procure fresh produce and assemble the baskets, delivering them to homes within the community.
However, we quickly ran into a paradox. Junior Achievement had established ground rules designed to safeguard the students, one of which prohibited the incurring of debt. While the intention behind the rule was commendable, it created a formidable obstacle for us. The stipulation meant that we could not create any liabilities, which presented a dilemma when we needed to purchase fruit without upfront capital. How could we acquire the fruit without incurring debts, and conversely, how could we secure funds to buy the fruit without taking on liabilities?
Innovatively, we devised a plan: we asked customers to pay in advance for their fruit basket orders. By doing so, we could collect money at the time of ordering and fulfill our deliveries a couple of weeks later. From a business standpoint, the approach was sound.
However, here’s where things took an amusingly questionable turn—in our efforts to maintain accurate financial records for our mentoring program, we encountered a conundrum with the weekly reports required by Junior Achievement. If we were to accurately reflect our cash collections and deferred revenues, it would certainly raise eyebrows at the regional office. Yet, it was crucial for us to track who had made payments and who still awaited their fruit.
So, perhaps not entirely meaning to, we found ourselves managing two sets of financial records. We created a “real” record to keep track of our transactions, while simultaneously fabricating a separate set for submission to Junior Achievement—the one that would undergo scrutiny during audits.
As we continued this practice for several weeks, it struck us during a casual discussion: we were indeed operating with two distinct sets of books. At that moment, we weighed the implications of our actions and, recognizing that the project was nearing its end, we decided to carry on with the established routine.
This experience was not only
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