Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Seventy Days Until My Release From Taft Federal Prison Camp
Earlier this year I participated in an interview with my friend Michael Santos. He was collecting information on white-collar offenders for a study on ethics. Through the interview, I responded to several questions that Professor Jana Schrenkler had put together. Michael compiled my responses and published them in an article he wrote.
That was the second contribution I made to the study of ethics. Last month I also participated in an interview with Professor Kelly Richmond Pope of DePaul University. The troubling trend of white-collar crime in our society shows that a real need exists to expand the learning resources for the subject of ethics.
As I advance into the final two months of my sentence, I am thinking more and more about ways in which I can contribute. While I conclude my sentence inside the boundaries of Taft Camp, I am gathering information from many of my fellow prisoners. I want to deepen my reservoir of knowledge on the dilemmas that other former executives faced. What was it that influenced them to sacrifice ethical values?
In my case, I am coming to the conclusion that it was more of an insecurity with my place in the world rather than greed. The desire for more money was but a symptom. Truthfully, I didn't need it. I was in my late 20s and I had already built a net worth that exceeded my first million. I was regularly earning more than $200,000 a year as a financial professional. Greed didn't drive me. Rather, it was a sense that I was leading a life that was unfulfilled. I felt bored with where I was in my career, and struggled with a sense that I had missed out on something, that I was under appreciated, that I was not living up to my potential.
There is a message, I think, in the lessons I've learned from prison. Not all white-collar offenders compromise their ethics because of personal insecurities. I am learning through my conversations with others that unbridled greed drove many of them into crime. Some succumbed to an urge to blackmail because of unrelated compromises in ethics. There are as many stories as there are prisoners.
I am collecting as many stories as I can. In so doing, I feel as if I am deepening my depth of knowledge on the compromises in ethics that tempt business professionals. Upon my release I would like to share what I've learned. Speaking on the subject will bring me a feeling of redemption. As I did with the two academic projects last month, I will offer my learnings to other universities. Besides the academic arena, however, I think a need exists for continuing education in the business community. I know that the lessons I've learned would have had value to me as a misguided financial executive. From what I'm reading in news reports today, I feel convinced that others could grow from these lessons as well.
