Friday, January 2, 2008
Since launching my blog in October, I have been in touch with a few universities. Through the end of 2008, I answered 15 questions which dealt primarily with business ethics, while breaking down the choices I made after graduating from USC in 1997.
General topics and questions included: the fraud triangle of pressure, rationalization and opportunity; accepting the stigma of a felony conviction; the greatest lesson I've learned from prison; advice I would give business students embarking on their chosen field; and last, but not least, my personal favorite - please discuss your Machiavellian tendencies. Fortunately I had already read Machiavelli's The Prince.
Recently, I turned the tables and asked the professors and students a couple of questions. My questions revolved around the writings of John Dewey who had been an influential educator from the University of Chicago. Dewey's work suggested that the bad man was the individual who, regardless of what good works he had done in the past, had ceased trying to make the world a better place. The good man, on the other hand, is the individual who, regardless of what bad he had done in the past, was striving to improve his own life as well as the lives of others.
My opinion is skewed, in part because I'm a convicted felon serving time in a federal prison. My primary objective is to reconcile with society, while contributing to the lives of others.
My questions were brief: Is John Dewey right? Am I a good man or does my felony fraud conviction preclude me from such a title?
Assuming the students are comfortable, I'll post their response as a blog in the near future.
