The meeting ended. Will picked up his pad, stood up, tossed his paper cup into the wastebasket, and stepped through the doorway right behind Janet. But before he could get her attention, Ed got his.
"Will, just one thing to button up — can you stop by my office a minute?" Ed asked.
"Sure," Will replied.
It was a short walk to Ed's office. They stepped in. Ed closed the door quietly. "Just want to give you the charge numbers for this week and next," he began. He handed Will a slip of paper that had two account numbers on it.
"Here they are. Top one's for this week, the other's for next."
"OK," said Will. "That it?"
"Yep. See you."
Will opened the door, went around the corner to his own office, set his pad and the slip of paper on his desk and sat. Odd, he thought. Why the secrecy? And why split the work across two accounts, when it was exactly the same work? He wondered what was going on.
Knowing budgetary
deception techniques
helps you stay out of
the gray areaWill never did find out. Perhaps it was legitimate, but it might have been a "budget swap."
In organizations that track expended effort, people charge their time to various accounts, represented by charge numbers. When "actuals" deviate too far from projections, the manager is often considered to have erred. Managers of overspent (or underspent) accounts are tempted to move charges across accounts to compensate.
In effect, they "swap" money across accounts. Here are just a few forms swaps can take.
- Altering time sheets
- This approach is less common today, because so many organizations now use electronic time reporting systems. Systems that still use hardcopy are the most vulnerable.
- Directed or conspiratorial misreporting
- Ed and Will might be a case of directed misreporting. Typically, this requires a level of naiveté or fear on the part of the person who's being directed. Conspiratorial misreporting occurs when all parties are aware that they're reporting false data.
- Parking
- In Parking, team members are temporarily detached from Project A, and then attached to Project B, which has adequate funding. Once parked, they may continue to do "just a little" work on A — a meeting, or a quick phone call, or more — but they charge all their time to B.
- Out and in
- When two budgets use the same external vendor for labor, equipment, or materials, the vendor can overcharge one of the budgets, and undercharge the other to compensate. Usually, this requires collaboration between the vendor and the managers. It's much easier to arrange when both budgets are controlled by the same manager.
Managers who use budget swaps to conceal problems do real harm to their organizations. But they harm themselves, too, because of another, less visible swap — their budgets for their integrity. Top Next Issue
Are your projects always (or almost always) late and over budget? Are your project teams plagued by turnover, burnout, and high defect rates? Turn your culture around. Read 52 Tips for Leaders of Project-Oriented Organizations, filled with tips and techniques for organizational leaders. Order Now!
For more about budgetary deception in the wider context, check out M. Jensen, "Paying People to Lie: The Truth About the Budgeting Process," European Financial Management, Vol. 9, pp. 379-406, September 2003. Available at SSRN.
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Related articles
More articles on Ethics at Work:
- When You're Scared to Tell the Truth
- In the project context, we need to know that whatever we're hearing from colleagues is the truth as
they see it. Yet, sometimes we shade the truth, or omit important details. Here's a list of some of
the advantages of telling the truth.
- Currying Favor
- The behavior of the office kiss-up drives many people bats. It's more than annoying, though —
it does real harm to the organization. What is the behavior?
- Looking the Other Way
- Sometimes when we notice wrongdoing, and we aren't directly involved, we don't report it, and we don't
intervene. We look the other way. Typically, we do this to avoid the risks of making a report. But looking
the other way is also risky. What are the risks of looking the other way?
- Telephonic Deceptions: II
- Deception at work probably wasn't invented at work. Most likely it is a continuation of deception in
the rest of life. But the technologies of the modern workplace offer new opportunities to practice the
art. Here's Part II of a handy guide for telephonic self-defense.
- Full Disclosure
- The term "full disclosure" is now a fairly common phrase, especially in news interviews and
in film and fiction thrillers involving government employees or attorneys. It also has relevance in
the knowledge workplace, and nuances associated with it can affect your credibility.
See also Ethics at Work for more related articles.
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