Cheaters, Intriguers and Dazzlers: Envy, greed and lies in work and everyday life – and how you can fight it

By Robert Düsterwald

How relaxed could our life be if there weren't always these dishonest, envious people, cheaters, intriguers and dazzlers. With cunning and lies they gain our trust to abuse it thoroughly.

We experience envy and greed, discrimination, exploitation or financial damage, while the cheater makes a career at our expense. His envy does not grant us anything, and he talks badly about us while pretending to be our best friend.

And sometimes it is even those who are particularly close to us who deceive us so much: our spouse, a colleague, a relative or our superior.

With various checklists in this book, such as the Cheater Recognition Test, you can find out for yourself, whether you are surrounded by honest friends or by underhanded hypocrites. The book also shows you how to defend yourself against cheaters.

In addition to the cheating behavior of individuals, the last chapter of the book deals with the threat to the ethical principles in organisations posed by corruption and mismanagement and it describes the internal control system as an effective countermeasure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Books on Demand
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9783750477209

Robert Düsterwald

Robert Düsterwald is a German management consultant. After his studies, he worked for many years as consultant and senior manager in controlling, project management and auditing in companies of various industries. He writes about topics from his professional and private experiences. Robert Düsterwald ist ein deutscher Unternehmensberater. Nach seinem Studium arbeitete er viele Jahre als Berater und Senior Manager in den Bereichen Controlling, Projektmanagement und Audit in Unternehmen verschiedener Branchen. Er schreibt über Themen aus seinen beruflichen und privaten Erfahrungen.

Book preview

intended.

1 Foreword

Dear reader,

Who does not know them, the deceivers and greedy, the cheaters and liars, the hypocrites, the Pharisees in business and everyday life? They are ubiquitous, sitting in offices, stores and homes, in authorities, politics and business, but also in our closest and most familiar environment - our circle of friends and even our family. They swear us friendship in order to exploit us all the more thoroughly behind our backs, to take advantage of us and to harm us.

If we could at least recognise them as false friends, this might not even be so bad – then at least we would know where we stand. Better a declared enemy than a dishonest friend. But I originally baptised them ‘dazzlers’, because they cleverly give the appearance of worthiness and decency, and precisely because of this we do not realise that perhaps they are the ones who are responsible for our financial misery, our dejection, our career break or for an even worse fate. Nonetheless in this book we will call them what they are: cheaters.

It is no wonder that there is a lack of reliable statistics on the type of person I describe, because those I describe in this book are the ones who know how to cleverly camouflage their underhanded intentions and who often manage to operate below criminal or civil relevance. That is why it is so difficult to defend oneself against their attacks. Seldom are they sued, and in many cases the required evidence is simply missing. In addition, not everything that is legally permitted is morally justifiable.

In the best case cheaters constantly cause pettifogging annoyances, but in the worst case they cause serious, permanent damage. Damages that can lead to the economic and financial ruin of those they have outsmarted. Some of the ‘victims’ still trust the ‘perpetrator’ to the end, sometimes blindly.

If we knew exactly, who are all the people who secretly want us evil, we might not be able to sleep peacefully - but at least we could then seize the root of the bad and better bring about a short and horrible end, instead of experiencing endless horror. But mostly we don't know - or we don't know for sure - and that's where everything starts.

Because only when you can recognise the hidden behavior patterns that betray a cheater you are able to defend yourself against cheating and to limit, eliminate or prevent its harmful effects with appropriate measures in your private or professional environment.

This brings us to the purpose of this book. Cheaters are as diverse characters as we all are, but I would like to show in this book that the behavior of cheating is mostly recognisable by certain patterns. These patterns are not written on their foreheads, but in the course of time characteristics of cheating can be recognised very well by sufficient observations.

So I have developed a test with the help of which you can assess a person known to you on the characteristics of a cheater. Further tests will show you how susceptible someone is to attacks from cheaters and how you can recognise signs of cheating behavior in organisations. I will also show you how to defend yourself against attacks from cheaters.

Of course, I can only suggest a catalogue of different options; you must think for yourself about which of the means you want to use and, most importantly, how you want to do that and to what extent.

This book and the tests it contains are not a scientific work, although many of its private observations and conclusions are similar to results elaborated in professional areas such as compliance (in the workplace) or forensics (in criminal investigations). But even if in my opinion the book does not contradict to these established findings in any way, it is not an objective textbook; it is rather a very private guidebook, born from countless own observations and experiences that I have gathered over many years and would like to make available to others. Its main aim is to provide food for thought and discussion.

If I only succeed in opening your eyes a little so that you perhaps recognise one or the other cheating dazzler in your environment or that of a friend and from now on you can defend yourself against this person, then I have already achieved my goal.

Nevertheless - even if you will find a number a lot of examples of dishonest, shameful behavior in this book - it is not my intention to give you the impression that most people are cheaters, or that there is always and everywhere only envy at play. No, they still exist, the really decent people, whom you will appreciate even more, when you know what distinguishes them from cheaters.

The self-published book - note for readers

I published the book using a self-publishing service. This means that the writing of all texts, the entire reading of the draft, all corrections and the translation into English was done by myself as the author.

For a completely unknown author, the statistical chance of being accepted by a renowned publisher is about 1:400.

If you don't publish a current topic, are not a celebrity, don't know a publisher personally or via friends, the chance of being accepted by a publisher will probably be even much lower, since nowadays everyone is free to transform texts spoken with modern software into a document, so that you as an author are in competition with millions of other authors.

Nevertheless, I have taken the trouble to follow the hard path of self-publishing, because I believe that everyone should have the chance to publish his experiences or opinion.

I would like to express my thanks to the BoD publishing house, which enables me to publish my book myself.

But even the best author cannot do everything perfectly: the (new) German spelling, the editing, the layout, the translation into English, the study of international copyright law etc. require professionals who want to be paid appropriately for their work. Unfortunately, not every author can afford this, especially if it is a book on a niche topic that promises rather low book royalties.

Therefore, dear reader, mistakes in this book are not completely avoidable despite multiple reviews. They go exclusively on my bill. I hope that you are addressed by the content of the book in such a way that you can sympathetically overlook the small formal and linguistic error devils.

2 Ethical Conduct in Business and Society

2.1 Ethics, morality and social order

Cheating describes behavior that is incompatible with honorable and respectable demeanor, with honesty and responsibility, with fairness and reliability.

This means we enter the ethical and moral field. Thus it is worth taking a look at what these terms mean and why ethics is so important in most civilisations. If I then explain my personal view of 'cheating' as a specific kind of behavior to you in a later chapter, you will always recognise the contradiction of this behavior to ethical principles.

Unfortunately, both terms, ethics and morality, are not described uniformly in the literature and their definitions are a little bit abstract¹. I therefore take the liberty of making my own proposal for the definition of the two terms:

Ethics - synonym: Ethos

Ethics is the value system of a group or society that their members consider to be a desirable ideal to strive for. The actual behavior usually deviates from this. In this respect, ethics is the yardstick for evaluating our actions. We distinguish human behavior on the basis of this yardstick by evaluating it with the categories ‘good’ (corresponding to the ethos) or ‘evil’ (contradicting the ethos).

Morality

Morality reflects the actual behaviors shown in relation to the value system, but also the norms accepted by most members of a group or society in everyday life.

Morality thus refers to the norms and behaviors observable in everyday life. They do not always correspond to the ethical ideal, but to the common custom. Behavior that corresponds to or approaches the ethical ideal is described as ethical or as bearing witness to a high moral standard. Behavior that is below normal morality or far away from ethical values is called unethical or immoral.

Both terms are about ‘attitude’, the way in which human interaction is founded and judged. With ethics, a civilisation pursues the goal of creating a common basis for interaction of their members, which is binding for everybody and which is generally regarded as ‘good’. This basis is then to serve the individual as an orientation for his own behavior. Society, in turn, has a yardstick for the moral evaluation of the actions of individuals and can react to deviations by rewarding or sanctioning them.

In my opinion, Immanuel Kant's ‘categorical imperative’ describes very clearly how an individual can best comply with this ethical orientation:

‘Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time want it to become a general law².’

According to an old proverb:

‘Do not do to others what you do not want others to do to you.’

Now we are interested in why such values and morality concepts are set up as rules for the behavior of all members of a group at all. Wouldn't it be easier if everyone only had his own advantage in mind? Stealing, for example, is usually quicker done than buying and is also cheaper, lying and cheating enable better better negociation results.

The social consensus

However, morality and ethics are not individual concepts, but social concepts. For what is wrong or right, what is advantageous or dishonest, is not determined by the individual. It is determined by society, that is, by all those who belong to a certain group. Society gives itself a system of values on which the individual members can orient their actions.

Why does society do this? Well, because from the group's point of view there are several good reasons for this. The quick benefit from individuals disregarding the value system is countered by a collective disadvantage: A lack of protection of the individual against unjust enrichment by third parties reduces the incentive to create assets and is therefore economically harmful.

Moreover, trust is the basis of fruitful cooperation. The constant possibility of being deceived causes a great deal of uncertainty, which impairs the courage and energy of all acting individuals.

Let us take one example:

The trader who buys the goods from the farmer in the Middle Ages in order to resell them profitably on the market will at some point be attacked by robbers who will take his goods as their prey. If this happens again and again, at some point he will no longer sell any goods on the market. The farmer remains sitting on his goods or consumes them himself. If we assume that all traders are robbed, then the farmer will perhaps survive, but the rest of the population supplied by his goods must starve because the goods do not reach the woman/man or because they spoil. He will then no longer produce surplus goods and the robbers will starve because there is not enough surplus to be stolen.

For the robbers their short-term robbery is perhaps cheaper and easier than honest work, but only until the farmer no longer produces surplus goods.

In addition, the robbers run the risk of being caught and hanged by the sheriff in charge - this might mean the early end to the robbers' chosen 'business model'.

Society as a whole is therefore interested in protecting the value-creating part of the population from dishonest attacks by others. This is the basis of all civilisations: They give themselves certain rules, even unwritten rules, which are advantageous for the honest and for society as a whole in the long run, because performance pays off and the possibility of being able to trust others in cooperation creates long-term planning security. In consequence, only those whose conduct is oriented towards the ethos of the group receive social recognition.

Nevertheless, there are contemporaries who want social recognition but shy away from the effort required to achieve it. Since they know that this would be socially 'outlawed', they camouflage their unfair behavior. If such a 'deceiver' is clever enough to give the impression of being honest, he would not be affected by the sanctions of society which are intended to enforce compliance with the rules - and he could gain an advantage in the short term at the expense of others without having to work hard for it.

So unless everyone is rationally convinced that fair, honest action is better than dishonest action, there will be people who try to gain unjustified benefits by disguising their intentions. They will always weigh the possible advantages against the disadvantages that 'getting caught', e.g. in the form of legal consequences, could entail. The more skillfully they can deceive others, the less likely their manipulation is to be discovered and the less likely they are to fear the adverse consequences.

In order to achieve the ethical goal, society has no choice but to sanction the misconduct of individuals - but it must first define its ethical values.

An Example of Ethos: The 10 Commandments

Perhaps they have not yet been completely forgotten - the Ten Commandments. I know them from school lessons and from the preparation for communion as well as from former church attendances.

I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the house of slaves. Thou shalt have no other gods beside me.

Thou shalt not abuse the name of the Lord, thy God.

Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.

Honour thy father and thy mother.

Thou shalt not murder.

Thou shalt not commit adultery.

Thou shalt not steal.

Thou shalt not falsely testify against thy neighbour,

Thou shalt not ask for thy neighbour's house.

Thou shalt not desire thy neighbour's wife, his slave, his maidservant, his ox, his donkey, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.

Obviously, several thousand years ago these rules were considered indispensable, and it was obviously necessary to codify them - so already in those times the breach of these rules seems to have been a part of some people’s agenda.

If ethical conduct is to be a basis for the security of society as a whole, then society must be able to rely on it. Society usually ensures this through a governmental constitution, a judicial system, sometimes with the help of a religion and in the family through the education of its children.

To ensure that the rules do not remain pure lip services, particularly in ancient times rule offenses were punished with serious measures - the death penalty was already imposed on - from today's view - very minor offences. Maybe also because the possibilities of the detection of criminal offences were more limited at that time than today, so that only a cruel punishment could cause a certain deterrence.

And Kant again:

‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and the more persistently reflection deals with them: the starry sky above me and the moral law in me³...’

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¹ For example, Wikipedia understands ethics to mean the following:

‘Ethics 'the moral (understanding)', from ēthos 'character, sense', is that part of philosophy that deals with the preconditions of human action and its evaluation. At the centre of ethics is specific moral action, especially with regard to its justifiability and reflection. Cicero was the first êthikê to translate into the then new term philosophia moralis.’

From: Wikipedia, page ‘Ethics’. In: Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Editing status: November 13, 2015, 22:00