WORK SYSTEMS AFFILIATES BLOG

Are Creative People Less Ethical? A Quick Systems Thinking View

  

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I came across a working paper this week called "The Dark Side of Creativity - Original Thinkers Can be More Dishonest" in which the authors, Francesca Gino of Harvard University and Dan Ariely of Duke paint a picture of creativity generating unethical behavior.

Specifically, in their conclusions appeared these words "we demonstrated that ... a creative personality ... promotes individuals’ motivation to think creatively, such that higher scores on dispositional creativity ... lead to an increased motivation to think outside the box. In turn, this increased motivation promotes dishonesty."

First off, this is an example of the typical problem solving approach where we focus on trying to describe (in a novel way) the linear relationship between two things, in this case, creativity and dishonesty. This is what research is supposed to do I guess, but the authors are trying too hard to solve for their particular equation and not trying to find and leverage all factors that work together with creativity to drive dishonesty.

The beginning of a causal loop diagram of the above paragraph would look something like this:

I will grant the authors that those who are dishonest have a high likelihood of being creative. My guess is that those dishonest folks who lack creativity don't make it very far in their career of dishonesty.

When I think systemically about ethics, there are other factors that drive dishonesty. Here are three off the top of my head:

1. Ability to admit/own mistakes - If I am not comfortable admitting my mistakes, I will be more likely to be dishonest on some level in order to cover them up. My creativity can help me succeed at the cover-up, but the drive is my inability to take responsibility.
2. Expectations of success - Wall Street analysts, boards of directors and customers like to think positively about the future returns on investments. When the future arrives and isn't as shiny as they'd hoped, we may want to "spin" the results so that we don't incur the negative consequences. Related to this is that no one is comfortable with a leader saying "I don't know", so once again, he or she might make up information that isn't factual.
3. Focus on rule rigidity - The more an organization depends on written rules for guidance and not the ability to analyze the assumptions related to a decision, people are more likely to be dishonest. Rules can't take care of every situation, and when that happens, having flexibility to step away from the rulebook, put on your thinking cap and discuss assumptions and ramifications keeps the decision out of the darkness and above board. Strict adherence and interpretation of rules seems to drive dishonesty up.

Now the beginnings of a causal loop diagram might look like this:

In all three of these situations, creativity may be an accomplice, increasing because of a shrinking honesty, but it's not a perpetrator of dishonesty. The drivers exist elsewhere in the ethics system, in this case, leaning hard on the motivation to think outside the box.

What do you think? Should organizations be wary of creative types? Have you found creative people to be dishonest? Have you seen dishonest people who aren't creative? Leave a comment!