The Importance of Being Honest

Have you ever called in sick when you actually had plans during a workday? Taking an occasional day of hooky a bit further, have you ever told your boss you were at a client site when you were really running personal errands or meeting up with a friend? Some professionals even stretch their little white lies as far as claiming to be out of town at a training or on a client assignment when they are really on vacation. Regardless of where you fall on this spectrum of dishonesty, you should know that employers are increasingly hiring private detectives and using technology such as phone GPS to keep tabs on employees who claim to be out sick or traveling for work. In 2008, a landmark court case found that an employer did nothing unlawful in hiring an off-duty police officer to follow an employee suspected of abusing her paid medical leave. The fired employee filed the suit against her employer and lost. This set a precedent for companies suspicious of employee activity, particularly when claiming to be off sick or on disability leave.

For client service professionals such as those in public accounting where team members are constantly on the road or out of the office, the opportunities play hooky are all the greater than in other industries. While working for the Big Four, a fellow senior associate on my audit team did not show up for work at least once a week, sometimes multiple times a week. His obvious fibbing about being caught in inclement weather (he did commute nearly 2 hours to the office each way), his wife's poor health, and a host of other stories got more and more creative as time went on. While those of us who worked directly with him suspected his reasons, it took quite a while for his bosses to catch on, since they were often out of the office or working in a different area of the building, and failed to notice just how frequent his absence was. He was eventually fired, but only after a painfully long time of pushing his luck to get out of work.

If you are in the habit of abusing any of your time on the your employer's clock for personal use, be warned that the corporate surveillance business is currently booming. According to workforce productivity firm Kronos, there has been a 20 percent increase from 2006 to 2010 in US salaried employees taking sick days when they're not really ill. Kronos' Senior Director Joyce Maroney speculates that "people are staying in jobs they don't like because of a fear that there won't be another job out there," so their lack of enthusiasm for work or dislike of their employer provides them with justification for abusing their sick leave.

As an accounting professional, your integrity is the most important asset upon which you build your professional reputation, not only with clients but with employers as well. If you are dishonest in your personal activities, your employer will question your reliability in other areas such as specific skills or experience represented on your resume. The public accounting profession is also one in which each level of professional is relied upon to train more junior staff. So even if you're not a partner or manager, you most likely are setting a glaring example for other staff members or interns. By setting a lax tone when it comes to occasionally abusing sick leave, you are telling your supervisees that it's okay to manipulate the truth when it comes to work-related matters. That is a dangerous precedent to set in a profession that exists to provide independent assurance over the honesty of the representations of others.

The next time you feel there is no harm in stretching the truth to get out of work, keep in mind the importance of being honest in our profession (and also the increased likelihood your boss is keeping tabs on you).