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[Jack Abramoff] While I was in the middle of my lobbying career
I did not actually think I was being unethical.
I did not think anything was wrong.
[Professor Robert Prentice] The overconfidence bias is dangerous in ethics because
we tend to think we are more ethical than our neighbors,
than our co-workers,
and if we are overly confident regarding our own ethics,
we can make decisions without adequate reflection.
We can just assume, "oh I am a good person, I will make a good ethical decision."
And that is often how we air.
Somebody who knows they are doing something wrong can stop!
They say I am wrong and at some moment I will be strong enough to overcome that.
But somebody who is off course,
who thinks they are completely okay,
who thinks there is nothing I am doing that matters that is wrong
that person can not repent, can not come back
can not notice what they are doing.
And that was, I am the poster child for that.
Ninety two percent of Americans, when asked,
they are satisfied with their moral character.
Well, if you are satisfied with your moral character, and
if you just know you are more ethical than other people out there,
then you tend to not worry about ethics.
You just say "hey if I run into ethical issues,
I am pretty confident that I will handle them well,
because, after all, I am more ethical than other people and
I got good moral character."
I stopped caring where the line in the sand was.
From all these quote little laws that in my arrogance I thought did not apply to me
or I would not have get in my way as I pursued my goals.
Jack Abramoff did not lack in-confidence.
And it was easy for him to view himself as an ethical person
because of how religious he was.
And he read the Torah, everyday.
And I think he was particularly susceptible to the overconfidence bias
but, again, it is a lesson we all need to keep in mind.
I became arrogant.
I had so much success, I had so much, I won everything.
My team and I won everything.
Every one of my strategies seemed to work,
every one of our opponents was vanquished
and an arrogance set in.
And the arrogance was manifested also in my not listening
to people if they were not telling me what I wanted to hear.
And so I think the thing to keep in mind is
while those are explanations for making ethical missteps
they are not excuses.
They are not excuses when you are in front of the judge,
they are not excuses when your name is in the front page of the newspaper,
they are not excuses when you have to explain to your wife
and your children whey you have to go off to jail for the next several years.