Justified deception removes any motivation for ethical self-reform

Evidence

If fraudsters turned out to be productive contributors in the workforce, organizations would likely forgive indiscretion on job applications. An apology with remorse would bring forgiveness. What sparked reexamination of the executives’ résumés, whether their fraudulent behavior generalized to their work lives, and whether they lived up to their inflated self-presentations remain unknown. They all found well-paying jobs in a short time but in different industries where their past transgressions would not haunt them. In applying for a new job, only one of the managers gave the reason for the job change; all continued to doctor their résumés. Apparently justified and sanitized deception removes a need for ethical self-reform. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1437

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the ‘one clean lie’ theory of white-collar remediation — how self-justified deception blocks every internal mechanism that would normally stop repeat fraud.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1437
• XREF: connects to: Kierkegaard’s private ethic serves as deceptive class moral. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 177; Working in advertising was argued to degrade the worker’s own humanity through constant deception — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 263