Be Honest, You Cheated

Blogger's note: The following blog was written in Jul 2012. The blog was not published around Jul 2012. It was a draft. Minimal editing.

Raise your hands if you cheated. Be honest. You have cheated to some degree. How about cheating at school? You write an answer hidden somewhere taking an exam. How about something at your job? It could be something like getting information about a competitor's presentation. How about acquiring insider information when buying and selling stocks? Using insider information is illegal. How about cheating in sports? Professional sport players take steroids or performance enhancing drugs (PED). How about cheating playing a board game with friends? You take extra money while nobody else is paying attention. How about cheating in a relationship? Adultery.

The reason I'm writing a blog on cheating is asking the question, "What is cheating?" If I have an advantage at something, anything such as a game, a contest, a sale presentation, a school term paper, then is it cheating? I know I'm speaking in very general terms. I can't express my thoughts in more detailed. Maybe cheating is a case by case scenario. Maybe cheating is subjective. Maybe cheating depends on the people and the situation. Is a person who cheats a cheater? Is someone who cheats cheating, not playing the rules, or that someone is smarter finding a better way or gaining an advantage?

For instance, an accounting class project involved writing journal entries, ledgers, trial balances, reconciliations, and financial statements from accounting transactions such as sales, receivables, and payables. The project must be submitted hardcopy and in handwriting from templates the instructor provided. No computers and spreadsheets were allowed to complete the project. I said screw that. I used Excel to mimic the templates, calculate the debits and credits, and calculate the financial statements numbers. Obviously, I wrote the numbers on the hardcopy templates. I used Excel to generate the numbers.

Was that cheating? Yes. However, I completed the project more efficiently and less chance of making a mistake. I used Excel because it was faster and it was easier to find mistakes. My final grade in the project was a 91 out of 100. I lost points because of formatting such as centering the numbers on the financial statement. Part of the grade was on styling and formatting.

There were people at my workplace who cheated on marketing presentations, audits, expense reports, and quarterly internal reports. Cheating might not be the correct word for some incidents. It was being dishonest. They didn't get caught. They cheated or became dishonest because they needed an advantage, needed an edge, needed advance or insider information to get the job done. High school students cheated on college exams and college projects because they didn't want to. They have to because the college requirements are too hard.

I don't have a single, all purpose, apply daily in life answer to what is cheating. If my blog makes my reader philosophies cheating, then my blog was worth writing. I can tell you any advantage, any advanced information, any knowledge, any skill I earned or acquired honestly or legally, I'm going to use it to whatever I do to successfully complete my responsibility, my task, my project, and my assignment.

Update On A Past Blog

I said take advantages from the blog Take The Advantage, Use The Advantage on Jan 2, 2020. I dreamed I was in a hospital. The doctor challenged me to get a prescription in seven minutes. I was late. I didn't take advantage of a pharmacy on the same floor. Cheating is an advantage. Is cheating an acceptable advantage? It's a judgement call. There are exceptions. I didn't say cheat in the blog.