The Gray Area of Ethics in Mentorship: A Unique Experience

Throughout our careers, we often encounter situations that challenge our ethical boundaries, some more humorous than malicious. I recently reflected on an experience involving a group of junior associates who volunteered to mentor a high school team as part of a Junior Achievement program. The task was straightforward: guide the students in establishing and operating a mock business, which in our case happened to be selling fruit baskets.

The objective was simple—assemble fruit and baskets, then deliver the final products to customers within our community. However, Junior Achievement imposed specific rules, one being that our business could not take on any debt. While this guideline was undoubtedly designed to safeguard the organization, it presented a significant hurdle in the real world. How do you procure inventory without the capital to do so? And how could we generate funds without incurring liabilities?

The answer? We found a workaround: requiring customers to prepay for the fruit baskets. By collecting payment upfront, we sidestepped the issue of debt. On paper, this solution was efficient, but where the situation became amusingly unethical was in the financial reporting aspect of our endeavor.

As we prepared weekly financial reports to submit to Junior Achievement, we realized an unintentional funny twist: we were effectively maintaining two sets of financial records. The first set accurately reflected cash collections and deferred revenue—details that would undoubtedly upset the organization. The second set, which we submitted for review, painted a very different picture, one designed not to raise any eyebrows.

We navigated this dual Bookkeeping system for several weeks, and during one casual conversation, it dawned on us that we’d stumbled into a rather gray ethical territory. Despite the ethically dubious nature of our actions, we were also aware that we were teaching valuable lessons to the students about entrepreneurship, responsibility, and creative problem-solving.

Ultimately, we decided to continue with the dual record-keeping since the project was nearing its conclusion. It was an amusing diversion that reflected not only the challenges of entrepreneurship but also the inventive solutions we sometimes concoct to navigate bureaucratic obstacles.

While our experience might not be a textbook example of ethics in mentorship, it serves as a reminder of the complexities inherent in professional settings and the creative—and sometimes questionable—decisions we make along the way.