Back when Scott Thompson attended Stonehill College, the school did not offer a Major in Computer Science as his resume to Yahoo! indicated. When I first heard about the controversy surrounding Yahoo!’s new CEO, I had wondered if a quasi-acceptable explanation would be found in his having taken a significant number of Computer Science courses before the school had officially established the Computer Science Major. A few more detailed articles on the subject later, I learned the school had only offered a single class in the subject titled “Introduction to Computer Science” while Mr. Thompson was in attendance.
Instead of an inspiring an interesting debate about the difference between honesty and truthfulness, the story of a lying CEO candidate first being awarded the top spot and then being exposed has sparked heated discussion about professional ethics. Days later the discussion became even more heated when the Harvard Business Review published research under the title heading “Male Professionals with Higher Ethical Standards Earn Less.”
But perhaps the more interesting story is how today’s technology not only makes it easier to catch a CEO’s lies, it also makes it easier to uncover what goes unsaid in any number of professional interactions. Consider the market for talent. For decades, hiring managers have asked employment candidates for references as part of the evaluation process. Today, both hiring managers and employment candidates can investigate each other with the help of data that is publicly available. Either party can easily look online to find a former boss, co-worker of subordinate of the other to contact and get a more independent and objective reference. Even without a call, one can look online to see which companies and departments within those companies had high, low or average turnover.
Today, for every Scott Thompson caught, there are probably at least ten others who have not been caught. So while today’s less ethical male professionals may be out-earning their more ethical peers, the growing transparency emerging from our increasingly networked and transparent world will hopefully erode the moral hazards that newsworthy events like Scott Thompson’s resume demonstrate still persist.
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