Great scam artists are often described as “creative.” Jeffrey Skilling was a virtuoso of “creative accounting.” Bernie Madoff pulled off a “creative reinvention” of the old Ponzi scheme. And Charles Ponzi himself was a "creative promoter" and a "creative and ambitious businessman." Just last week, we met Mike Daisey, king of "creative license." Coincidence?
Perhaps not.
"The creative process isn’t just tied to dishonest behavior; it actually enables it."
A recent article in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology makes the claim that creativity walks hand in hand with loose ethics. Francesca Gino of Harvard University and Dan Ariely of Duke University conducted a series of experiments in which they asked subjects to complete various ethically ambiguous tasks. The result: Not only do naturally creative people cheat more than uncreative people, subjects cajoled into thinking outside of the box become cheaters, too. This suggests that the creative process isn’t just tied to dishonest behavior; it actually enables it--troubling news at a time when the corporate world treats innovation as an unimpeachable moral good.
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