Ethical Dilemmas in Mentorship: A Lesson from the Junior Achievement Experience

In the realm of professional development, we often encounter situations that challenge our moral compass. A recent mentorship program I participated in for Junior Achievement brought to light a rather humorous, albeit questionable, ethical dilemma that unfolded during our attempt to set up a small business with high school students.

As mentors, a group of us, consisting of second and third-year associates, volunteered to guide a team of high school students through the process of establishing and running a small business. The project aimed to cultivate entrepreneurial skills through the sale of fruit baskets over a two-to-three-month period. With our team focusing on sourcing bulk fruit and assembling visually appealing baskets for local delivery, we quickly ran into a fundamental obstacle posed by Junior Achievement’s rules: no debt was allowed.

While the objective behind this guideline was undoubtedly to protect the organization, it created a significant barrier for us. The restriction against taking on any liabilities posed a real challenge to our business model. Specifically, we found ourselves grappling with the question: How could we procure fruit without any initial capital, and how could we raise those funds without incurring liabilities?

The solution we devised was to ask customers to prepay for their fruit baskets. Collecting payments upfront meant we could secure the necessary funds to purchase the fruit without technically breaching the rule against liabilities. From a business standpoint, this approach proved to be quite effective.

However, as we navigated the operational aspects of the project, we stumbled upon a rather amusing ethical quandary related to our record-keeping practices. As mentors, we were required to produce weekly financial reports for the Junior Achievement office. If we accurately reflected the prepayments and deferred revenue in these reports, we knew it would raise eyebrows—and potentially attract ire— from the organization. Consequently, we resorted to maintaining two sets of financial records: one for our internal management that accurately tracked income and expenses, and another for submission to Junior Achievement that presented a much cleaner but more misleading picture.

What began as an innocuous decision evolved into a realization: we were, quite literally, keeping two sets of books. Surprisingly, we discovered that our student mentees were also involved in this roundabout Accounting practice. By the time we recognized the implications of our actions, it was several weeks into the project. With the deadline approaching and successful sales under our belts, we opted to continue this dual-recording strategy until the project concluded.

This experience served as a pivotal