Jeff Smith: What lessons can be learned from imprisonment for lack of ethics?
What can we learn from those who have committed ethical crimes and served time in prison?
Key points:
- In a Ted talk video, Jeff Smith relays the positive direction he has taken after imprisonment for an ethical crime.
- Ethics have the potential to influence behaviour and expose the business or your practices to financial irregularities, fraud and other illegal activities.
- Jeff discusses his move towards trying to harness the potential of ex-offenders and cut re-offending.
Through their ethical behaviour, Chartered Accountants (CAs) are a force for good in the organisations in which they work. They can also influence those around them and help shape the culture and values of their organisation. But what about people who have committed and admitted to a wrongdoing?
You might have heard of Jeff Smith. He is a former US Democratic member of the Missouri State Senate from 2007-2009, before he was convicted for hiding an election law violation.
In 2004, he submitted a false affidavit to the Federal Election Commission, and an FBI investigation was opened in 2009 for attempted obstruction to the Commission.
He was imprisoned for the felony of conspiracy to obstruct justice, and avoided a potential 40-year prison sentence, receiving one year and one day in jail, with a $50,000 fine.
Now no longer in federal custody, Jeff relays his experiences, and the lessons learned from his incarceration and works as a political commentator, writer, professor and prisoner advocate.
In a TED talk, Jeff discusses the business sense of some inmates, which he compares to the instincts of CEOs: "The business concepts that [inmates] talked about weren't unlike those which you would learn in a first-year MBA class in Wharton."
Jeff is now living a life free of crime and ethical violations, and questions why we don't nurture potential and any entrepreneurial spirit to cut re-offending and increase contribution to society.
Categories:
- CPD
- Ethics
