VP of Finance Kevin Foster Was Swept up in Conspiracy Charges and Went to Prison

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My guest for Episode #125 of the My Favorite Mistake podcast is Kevin Foster, the CEO of Business Ethics Advisors, LLC. He is a former financial executive with FDIC-Division of Liquidation, Standard Chartered Bank, and Dr Pepper Co., a 30-year veteran in real estate, and a former CPA with Peat, Marwick & Mitchell (now KPMG).

Kevin’s journey took him from corporate real estate executive to a convicted felon (37 months in prison with 28 days in solitary confinement).

Now, Kevin uses his E.T.H.I.C.S. tools to provide ethics awareness and solutions so that others will be prepared to identify the personal characteristics and circumstances leading to unethical behavior. 

In today's episode, Kevin tells his “favorite mistake” story about being a finance executive with a real estate company and how he got swept up in criminal conspiracy charges for basically being in the wrong job at the wrong time and for not quitting when he saw red flags.

We talk about that story and other topics including:

• What fraud was being committed by the company you were working for? How did that lead to your personal conviction?
• Kevin quit – but got talked into coming back…
• Was tying to avoid charges… “conspiracy” charges harder to get out of, doing “anything” that advances the conspiracy means you're complicit (even being in one meeting)
• How did “ethical problems” turn into legal problems?
• Why he's “shocked” that no other Theranos employees are facing charges
• What it's like for a white-collar person to go to prison??
• Preparing for incarceration?
• “Everything that happens… must happen… for a reason”
• “Three Felonies a Day” book – white collar professionals – so many laws that can get you thrown in prison
• Too many ethics programs are rules-based, video based
• He teaches values-based ethics 
• Why are people unethical?
• Does anybody question if a convicted felon can be teaching them ethics? Learning from mistakes personified…

Find Kevin on Social Media:

• LinkedIn – Individual
• LinkedIn – Company

Scroll down to find:

• Quotes
• How to subscribe
• Full transcript

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Automated Transcript (Likely Contains Mistakes)

Mark Graban (0s):
Episode 125, Kevin Foster, CEO of Business Ethics Advisors, LLC.

Kevin Foster (8s):
And I was thinking in my own mind that certainly I had nothing to do with that project where I was going to be implementing any type of criminal activity.

Mark Graban (21s):
I'm Mark Graban. This is My Favorite Mistake. In this podcast, you'll hear business leaders and other really interesting people talking about their favorite mistakes because we all make mistakes, but what matters is learning from our mistakes instead of repeating them over and over again. So this is the place for honest reflection and conversation, personal growth and professional success. Visit our website at myfavoritemistakepodcast.com for links, show notes. And more for this episode, you can go to markgraban.com/mistake125. Thanks for listening now on with the show and our guest today is Kevin Foster.

Mark Graban (1m 4s):
He is an ethical leader expert and the path that he took to get to the work he does today, I think is going to be a fascinating story and conversation today. So Kevin is a former financial executive with a number of organizations. He was the 30 year veteran in real estate. He was a former CPA with the firm that is now KPMG, but Kevin's journey took him from corporate real estate executive to convicted felon spending 37 months in prison with 28 days in solitary confinement. So Kevin now is CEO of a company, Business Ethics Advisors. My mistake I'll.

Mark Graban (1m 44s):
I stumbled over that Business Ethics advisors, where he uses his ethics tools. And there's an acronym there we might learn about today to provide ethics, awareness and solutions. So others can be prepared to identify personal characteristics and circumstances that lead to unethical behavior and, and sometimes we're. So Kevin, thank you so much for being a guest here today. How are you?

Kevin Foster (2m 6s):
Well, Mark, thank you very much for having me on I'm doing great today and so good to see you and be on your show. So I'm really looking forward to this.

Mark Graban (2m 13s):
Yeah. Well thank you for being willing to share your story. And I, I haven't really heard the details of the story. I may have spoiled a little bit of the story with the introduction, but, but Kevin, thinking back to your career, you know, w what is your favorite mistake? What happened?

Kevin Foster (2m 31s):
Okay, so I was VP of finance for a real estate development company, and I helped start. The company was very actually involved in all aspects of its founding and management, but I was based in Atlanta and the company was really based in North Carolina. So I was removed from all the other executives and the owners of the company. We had a project up in the mountains in North Carolina, that was 2000 acres. It was a big project. And the ownership solicit a lot of investors for that particular project. And those investors were made promises as part of their inbound part of their investment.

Kevin Foster (3m 15s):
Well, this was in 2003 through 2007. We know what happens towards, as we got closer to 2007, the real estate market just started totally crashing. And that real estate project, like many others failed. And those investors ultimately complained to the North Carolina attorney General's office and to the us attorney's office in Charlotte. But leading up to that, we knew there were some problems with that project. And I also was aware that those owners were doing some pretty shady things that surrounded that project.

Kevin Foster (4m 1s):
And when it looked like the project was going to fall apart, the owner of that company, I'll just use his first name. Tony kept on saying, you know, Kevin, I'm not the only one that's going to go to prison here. I'm not the only one that's going to go to prison. And that ended up being my favorite mistake because I ignored that huge warning that he gave me. And in my own mind, I was thinking that it was going to be his partners that were up there in North Carolina. There was an attorney that was actually involved, two attorneys that were actually involved in that project. And I was thinking in my own mind that certainly I had nothing to do with that project where I was going to be implementing any type of criminal activity because of my own mind.

Kevin Foster (4m 49s):
I was not guilty of any criminal activity I never met or talked to any of those investors and the banks that were involved. I didn't have anything to do with any of those banks. So in my own mind, I never thought that I was going to be implicated in there. So I should have listened to those warning signs. And when the project, when I was actually involved in trying to get that project refinanced and ultimately with the existing loan, those guys had defaulted on that existing loan. And I actually had resigned my job as chief financial or VP executive VP of finance, no one, they were not going to be able to get out of that project with any new financing.

Kevin Foster (5m 39s):
And all of this is really before the project had ultimately failed and I quit. And unfortunately I let the owner, Tony talk me into coming back on, on with the company to try to bail them out of that project. And once I got bit got back in on that project, I was deeper and deeper in that project and everything sir turned on that at that point in time. So my favorite mistake was actually warning those huge red flags that were flashing in front of me, including Tony. Tell me I'm not the only one who going to prison and actually even rejoining the company after I quit.

Kevin Foster (6m 26s):
If I had stayed quit, I would never have been implicated in any type of criminal accusation

Mark Graban (6m 35s):
Did his, so, wow. Thank you for sharing that. And you know, there's lots of questions that come to mind, like, like for one, I mean this, this guy Tony is saying, I'm not the only one who's gonna go to prison. Like, did that seem like some sort of just failed business, gallows humor where you, you, you, you didn't really like, is there a fine line between a business failing? And then, you know, there were accusations and convictions of fraud, which implies like some intent on some level, right?

Kevin Foster (7m 8s):
Well, by this time, as the project was failing, there were some guys or begin to accuse the ownership of fraud. And then Tony had actually confided in me about this, about the same time that he had placed two, it plays the same property as collateral on two separate loans, which is certainly fraud. So I was kind of aware of it. Plus we went out and got attorney's opinion letter from a large firm that how we were closing the investor loans was all perfectly legal.

Kevin Foster (7m 49s):
And in my own mind, I had actually questioned whether they were closing those things in a perfectly legal manner. And there, that question came more and more forward as some other people started looking at the project. And so there really was some concern about the time that I put the project, whether there was fraud involved, because certainly the previous, the previous lender who these guys were defaulted on and started accusing them of fraud at that particular time. And that's really what I quit. So yes, there were some accusations of fraud on their part related to that project leading up to, and including the time that I had actually quit six months previously to the whole project falling apart.

Mark Graban (8m 41s):
So what is the lesson for other executives? If there are unethical things happening in a company that may then become illegal, even if you're not actively involved in fraudulent acts, or if you're not involved in any sort of conspiracy, like how, how does an executive avoid getting caught up in kind of the wider net of the FBI or the DOJ or prosecution? Is that, is the answer simply just to quit and get out of the situation? Or what else should executives do?

Kevin Foster (9m 16s):
Well they've, they should have, but let me kind of tell you why. So it ended up, let me just kind of tell you where the story one, and then I'll let me back feed the answer to that question. So when the project did fail and the, and the us attorney's office and the attorney General's office for North Carolina got involved, then there was an FBI investigation, a criminal investigation. And of course the FBI was asking me questions and I immediately had hired a criminal defense attorney. And I paid him about $250,000 in legal fees to try to stave off any type of indictment on my part. And what the us attorney started talking about was conspiracy.

Kevin Foster (9m 58s):
And this was a very, very hard lesson to me, even though I was not directly involved in that project whatsoever under our American criminal laws with conspiracy, anything, anything that another person does to advance that conspiracy in some way, whether it's a meeting that you attend a telephone call, a conversation, a document that you prepare almost to anything can get you tied up in that conspiracy. And you are just as guilty as anyone who perpetuated that conspiracy for the total amount of the conspiracy.

Kevin Foster (10m 39s):
In this case, it was a hundred million dollars in alleged fraud, which is a large amount. So my attorney eventually came to me and said, say, Kevin, look at these guys, want to go after you, and they want to go after you hard for conspiracy. And I'm going to tell you, they're going to go after you for 20 to 30 years in prison. And, and I already told them, I didn't want to plead guilty. The us attorney's office was telling me or tell my attorney. They thought that, you know, with one or two counts, they would be able to negotiate that plea down to that amount, which is five years in prison. So the, the whole fact says, Kevin, I'll take this thing to prison, to a trial if you want me to take it to trial, but I can, I'm going to tell you, my legal fees are going to be an additional $1 million.

Kevin Foster (11m 28s):
I want $350,000 right now, today. You're going to have to prove to me, we're going to come up with other $650,000. Well, this was money. I did not have I already given him $250,000, but a sophisticated white collar crime, which is what this was. The FBI had millions of dollars. Millions of pages of documents involves a lot of research, lot of time and a trial live expert testimony. So there's a lot of time involved. Plus he was trying to save me from spending the rest of my life in prison. And quite frankly, I have one of the best white collar or attorneys available in North Carolina.

Kevin Foster (12m 10s):
He's very, very well-known white collar attorney. So his fee, I mean, that was pretty much the going rate, believe it or not. So it was very expensive. So what could other executives that were in my position, know what the north conspiracy laws are know that if you have done anything whatsoever to, to hide ongoing criminal activity, you know, chances are, they can bring you in and you could be part of, of that criminal trial to give you a real life example.

Kevin Foster (12m 50s):
I am shocked, absolutely shocked there were no other employees at Theranos that were there are facing trial, besides Sunny and Elizabeth Elizabeth. I am absolutely shocked that new other employees are facing trial in that case. But certainly if you read very solid that HBO special, Bad bBood, there was a lot of people there that knew those machines to not work and that there was a lot of fraud involved in that company.

Mark Graban (13m 21s):
And are there not conspiracy

Kevin Foster (13m 24s):
On and on where other employees absolutely know that there are, their bosses are, are involved in, you know, illegal activities and they do nothing to stop it. And they play long to go along. I was making a large amount of money. I was making a lot of money and a lot of guys they'll hang out in order to be able to keep that money coming in. That's just human nature. Sure.

Mark Graban (13m 52s):
So do you know, I mean, I know the Theranoe story, I've read the book, Bad Blood and some of the, you know, the audio or the documentary tellings of that story. And now that it's in trial, I haven't followed it that closely, but are you saying there for all of the charges they're facing they're there are not conspiracy charges, is that at the discretion of prosecutors or the

Kevin Foster (14m 16s):
Yes, there's certainly at the discretion of the DOJ. All of this was the discretion of DOJ. And I was actually shocked. They were coming after me after me because of my lack of immediate involvement to the case, but this was a national case and they wanted heads to roll. And the guy who was internal J attorney general at that time for North Carolina, he is now governor of that state, Roy Cooper. So, you know, he had a political career that he needed to consider. Not that he got involved in the criminal aspect, but I had to settle civil charges with him as well. So there was a lot of pressure on everybody in that case in order to get heads.

Kevin Foster (15m 0s):
And that's what happened here.

Mark Graban (15m 2s):
Yeah. I mean, I've, I've watched a handful of legal dramas and, you know, I mean, it seems like there, there, there are some portrayals where like somebody like yourself would get leaned on to testify to bring down the, the quote unquote ringleader and, and, and, and give you a more favorable plea deal. Was there any of that? Or they were just like, no, they had enough evidence. They didn't have to get cooperation from somebody like your,

Kevin Foster (15m 31s):
Well, that's a, that's an interesting part. They were, there was one attorney who did not plead guilty. And I think there was a couple other defendants. They were looking at going after and they wanted to preserve my testimony. So they secured my, my plea deal, but they kind of held out that if you cooperate with us, we can go back. We can reduce your sentence. And, and I agreed to cooperate. They actually did go back. I never had to cooperate, but they did go back and they did reduce my sentence from five years to four years.

Kevin Foster (16m 12s):
So that did, that did happen. Not that it really saved me a lot of time in prison because, you know, I'm certainly, I wish I had never gone to never had gone to prison and the attorney that they hung out and he almost went to almost went to trial. He actually got you as actively involved in closing all these loans that were at question, he wasn't attorney talk about a person who should've known better. He ended up taking a plea deal to 36 months in prison, not the 60 months that I got. So in retrospect, there was a chance that I probably could have negotiated a better deal than what I've gotten, but when you're looking at 20 or 30 years in prison, you know, you really don't want to press the too far.

Kevin Foster (16m 56s):
Okay. So they tell you to go jump in the lake, you know,

Mark Graban (17m 0s):
There's, I mean, I want to come back and talk about the work that you do today through, through your company, business ethics advisors. But, but first I, I think there's a curiosity and maybe, you know, the, the, the listeners are wondering too. I mean, what, what is it like for somebody from, you know, a finance job, white collar job to go to prison? Was it, I mean, you know, you, you, I mean, like the show, it was probably, I don't know, I'm going to bring up the show, arrested development, where there were, you know, there was real estate fraud and the father of the family went to prison, but like people joke about quote unquote country club prison was anything like that. Or, I mean, what's the environment like,

Kevin Foster (17m 43s):
Okay, well, well, first of all, I started in a low security prison, which had, you know, 20, 30 feet, 30 foot electric electrified fences all around. And there were some really bad dudes that were in there. And I wasn't there for very long. I ended up, there were some concerns about my safety and I got thrown into solitary confinement for, for 28 days. And from solitary confinement, I was switched to a minimum security prison, which is also known as the camp FPC federal prison camp, which is what you're referring to as a country club prison. And the only reason why that's probably a little bit easier is there are no fences around it.

Kevin Foster (18m 24s):
And you have more, you have more freedom, but you know, you're in prison. Trust me, those guards there, they're called CEO's. You know, they treat you as if you are a hardened criminal. And certainly the only difference between the inmates were that the inmates that were at the prison camps had never been convicted of violent crimes. So someone has served some very long sentences along the way. They weren't violent criminals, but if you walked off of those premises without any fences, that's still prison break. And I saw some guys do that, and those guys are always caught and they always get longer sentences time added onto those sentences.

Kevin Foster (19m 12s):
But there's some guys that, you know, they just say, this is even too much for me. And they just, they called them walk off and they would just literally walk away, walk through the woods. And eventually they were, they were caught, they caught one guy down in Mexico when he was blowing his mouth about how he had escaped from prison. And some of the guys who was sitting around in Mexico, Perlin picked up the phone somewhere and they called the call the feds. And, you know, they had somebody to pick them up down in Mexico and brought them back. So it is a little bit easier if you're in a prison camp, but you know, you're in prison. You know, I had an opportunity there to meet some very interesting, you know, folks in prison.

Kevin Foster (20m 0s):
I met some pretty, you know, pretty famous guys. I mean, one of my best friends in prison was Jesse Jackson Jr. You know, the son of the Reverend Jesse Jackson, who was a 17 year Congressman, his case was pretty well known. You know, John Rigars, who was with Adelphia was a, was very well known him and Tim, John just recently died. One of the nicest men I ever met, but that was a big multi-million dollar fraud. That was right after. And Ron. So I met those guys. I knew those guys. I met a lot of other politicians, other business folks, but also there was a lot of drug dealers that were down there.

Kevin Foster (20m 45s):
You know, I was really good friends with a lot of Hell's Angels. I did, you know, so you had some, you had a hole, you know, you had the whole thing from college politicians and doctors to drug dealers and, you know, ran the whole gamut. So people that you would meet and there was a lot of interest in stories. And I got out, people would ask these same type of questions. Kevin, tell me your stories. And we'd be at dinner in a restaurant. My wife would be kicking me underneath the table because she thought I was talking too much, you know, about, you know, about prison, life and everything, but people have a natural. They really do want to know whether the prison, the stories they've heard are true or not.

Kevin Foster (21m 30s):
And some are true. Some are exaggerated. And it was a very interesting time my life. And I got to say that, you know, looking back on that time, time for it, I truly believe that everything that happens to somebody, including myself, everything happens that happened, had to happen. Everything that will must happen. And it all happens for a reason. And it serves us. I think I'm a totally different person now and what I was then I think I grew and matured through that whole prison experience. And I had an opportunity to help a lot of my fellow inmates, you know, through their prison journey.

Kevin Foster (22m 15s):
And I think there was a lot of positive things that came out of that whole journey. And I'm a real big believer in the hero's journey. If you're familiar with everyone's familiar with their hurdles during the final phase, that hero's journey is just like in the caveman that used to go off on the hunt and come back and sit around the tribe around the campfire and tell their, their hunting stories to the tribe, see, be able to relay those stories to the whole tribe can benefit from those stories. And that's exactly what happened to me. I know that you want to ask me about what I'm doing now and when I got out of prison, yes.

Kevin Foster (22m 56s):
I had a full experience that I thought that other people should benefit from. And that's what started my speaking career. Originally, I was going to write a book and that seemed like it was too too hard for me to do for too little money. And I thought that speaking was, was more interesting and probably more profitable on my part, quite frankly. And so I thought that other white collar professionals should know that small, unfair, unethical slips can have devastating consequences, including criminal liability and that people can learn from my story.

Kevin Foster (23m 36s):
And that's what taught started me on my current business that I'm on, you know, speaking and coaching, typically other white collar about how close most people are to go into prison. There's a book out that I would suggest anybody to recall. Three Felonies a Day by Harvey Silverglade, a Harvard law professor estimates that their average white collar professional literally commits three felonies a day and does not realize it lays out a very, very good case on where that can happen. And in my coaching, and in my speaking, I lay out that same, the same case people all the time will commit crimes.

Kevin Foster (24m 24s):
They do not realize they're committed. And there are 5,000 criminal laws against you put in prison, another 10,000 to 300,000 federal regulations that if the feds decided to prosecute you on, they can actually send you to prison for those violations. And they range everything from labor to, to banking to environmental. And you just take a look in the paper today. I mean, it seems like to me, they want to throw everybody in prison. You know, it's just, it's just, it's just incredible.

Mark Graban (24m 60s):
I mean, they're,

Kevin Foster (25m 1s):
They're white collar is considered a really bad dude these days, you know?

Mark Graban (25m 5s):
Well, I mean, you know, there, I mean, there are all kind of all levels. It seems of the fight against crime, whether it's violent crime or drug crimes or even white collar crimes. I mean, there are some, a point to say, Hey, there's this prison industrial complex that needs to be fed. And then there, there are for-profit prisons and there's some I've heard make that case of, you know, we're throwing too many people in prison for what might not be totally virtuous reasons.

Kevin Foster (25m 33s):
Well, we are definitely throwing too many people in prison. And if you want to take a look at a lot of problems that the lower income communities have with the lack of, you know, fathers around somebody who is the son or daughter of an incarcerated person, has a 50% higher chance of going to prison themselves than not, which is really a Starling statistic. When you think about it. And I would sit, my wife would kill, would drive from the land. It's in Butner, North Carolina, every other weekend to visit me in prison. So I spent a lot of time in the visitor's room at a federal prison.

Kevin Foster (26m 19s):
And I saw all these kids and all these wives come in there to visit their husbands in prison. And trust me when they left, they left without having a male, you know, supporter there, you know, income support and having, you know, just the guidance of fatherhood there for those, those kids and those kids need that. And there's no reason for it with GPS monitoring that we have. Now, you could easily attach a mom, an ankle monitor traumas to anybody. And with big data, you could run big data where you can run crime statistics and trace people back to see whether they committed those crimes.

Kevin Foster (27m 8s):
And, you know, I, when I got out, I had to submit to drug and alcohol, you know, tests and you know, to, so there's enough to monitor people as oppose. You don't have to throw everybody in prison. Not everybody goes into prison. And trust me, if I never spent a day in prison, I would never have committed another, another crime. I learned my lesson the first day that the FBI came knocking on my door. You know, I didn't need to have anybody tell me that I needed to wash my back. So, no, I think we incarcerate way too many people and everything that is talked about regarding drug crimes, the drug crimes, they, those sentences are way, way too long, way, way too long.

Kevin Foster (28m 2s):
And, and I had a really good friend of mine. He's still a friend of mine today that got caught up in a conspiracy case. His partner was dealing drugs. They owned a retail store together and he ended up getting nailed for conspiracy, deciding not to go to do not take the complete deal. His attorney promising meet, you can get off. He went to trial, he had people testifying against him, who he did not know who would have never met. And those people were promised lower sentences. They testified against this guy. So they obviously perjured themselves. This guy got sentenced to 30 years in prison, 30 years in prison.

Kevin Foster (28m 43s):
He did not commit a crime. He has spent in 19 and a half years in prison. And then he got out on an Obama clemency when they were passing out wo clemency, but he spent 19 and a half years in prison. And he is not bitter about it at all. He's a great friend of mine to this day. And I really give him, you know, a lot of credit and like me, he recognizes that, you know, that was a journey that he had to take and he took it and, and he did not do it in bitterness at all.

Mark Graban (29m 19s):
Well, I was, I was, I was going to say, Kevin, the one thing I'm not getting from sensing from you at all is anger or bitterness, but a desire like you've come to peace with it. You're, you're looking to help others. So I appreciate that.

Kevin Foster (29m 36s):
Yeah. I have no bitterness bitterness whatsoever. And I was, I think very, very fortunate. I met the right people at the right time in my life when I was in prison that had helped me along on my journey. And I will be forever indebted to those people as well. But that's a longer story and probably a very long interview or a documentary, to be honest with you. But, but yeah, I mean, it's a lot of it comes down that attitude. I mean, bad things happen to good people. And it's how you view those bad things that determined on how you're going to move forward with your life.

Kevin Foster (30m 17s):
And I certainly met a lot of people who were very, very bitter when I was a printer, very, very bitter.

Mark Graban (30m 25s):
So our, our guests today, Kevin Foster, again, his, his company is business ethics advisors. You can find his website, business, ethics, advisors.com. I mean, when, when you're brought into a company to give a talk, I mean, we've all heard about, you know, there's a program for kids like the scared straight program, or are you, are you being brought into provide ever so sort of a white collar version of that, or it's like, there's more gray area here about don't get yourself into a situation that can shift from unethical to against the law.

Kevin Foster (31m 4s):
Okay. Well, my big complaint about ethics programs and large corporations that they're all rules based. And essentially every employee is told to sit in front of a computer for an hour a year and take an ethics course. That's video based and that's it, that's gone. And then they're done. Plus see, I tech I teach values based ethics as supposed to rules, space ethics. And so when I'm hired, hopefully they're hiring me because they realize the benefit of having a combination of rules-based ethics, which is essentially satisfies whatever ethics requirements that the board or their auditors are requiring or whoever's the, the regulatory agencies are requiring a really though I've never seen rules, space.

Kevin Foster (31m 56s):
Ethics keeps somebody at her prison. If that was true, no, we wouldn't need to have these 5,000 criminal laws and 300,000 regulations out there. They don't keep people in prison. It's the moral compass that somebody has and being able to steer their own moral compass down that path and be able to recognize those flashing warning signs that are out there. I mean, I told you the big rag flat red flag then was waved in front of me. And I guarantee you that every executive has a wave, a red flag wave to them at some point in time in their career.

Kevin Foster (32m 37s):
And it's amazing how many people come up to me at the end of a talk said, Kevin, I know so-and-so should be in prison. I got to tell you that I had a lot of instances just like yours. And I'm actually shocked that I never went to prison based on your story.

Mark Graban (32m 53s):
So what, what's an example of a values-based ethics look at a situation. Can you give us one scenario? One example?

Kevin Foster (33m 5s):
Okay. So we had talked about ethics being, you know, being an acronym. So I'm just going to run it through real quick and then you can pick it up and pick it up. I know we're running out of time, but he, his ego. So we've seen all the exaggerated Eagles that are out there T his temptation H is hijacked. Typically by outside influence in this could be greed. It could be drug or alcohol abuse. It could be personal issues. I is integrity. And this is essentially integrity of management of, or the bosses or the people that we work around.

Kevin Foster (33m 48s):
See as consequences, not considered, not thinking that, you know, Hey, look, if I continue to go on this path, I could be going to prison myself. And S is stinking thinking, which is like, everybody does this, everybody, my industry does this. If I just do this one thing I won't be caught. So these are all examples of ethics thinking, values based, you know, ethics. And I mean, I expand on each of those and give examples on to my audience on how any one of those can get you into a lot of trouble.

Kevin Foster (34m 32s):
Yeah. So

Mark Graban (34m 33s):
One example of stinking thinking and stinking thinking is just rationalizing things, making excuses like everybody does it. I have to do this to compete things like

Kevin Foster (34m 43s):
That's right. This is what expected of me. If I'm going to do it, I'm gonna be done man out. Everybody's going to hate me if I don't do it. You know, and this is really why management is so important to, you know, when I take a look at most of the examples out there that it fit the papers, it's really senior executives that have made that have made the problems, initial problems. We saw that in Enron, we saw it in thoroughness. We saw it at Adelphia. We see it at Wells Fargo. I was just going to add, I mean, it's over and over again. Somebody, somebody along the line could have said stop it.

Kevin Foster (35m 24s):
And that's generally a seniors executive. It takes a junior, but in the case, like three of us, it took a junior level example to bring it to the regulators, you know, fourth, you know? Right.

Mark Graban (35m 41s):
Yeah. I mean, the Wells Fargo case is one that I followed really closely and I've blogged about it a couple of times. And right, about the same time, there were parallels to an ethics scandal, as it was described in the VA health administration at clinics and hospitals around the country. And whether it was, you know, signing customers up for bank accounts, they didn't ask for, or, you know, lying about patient wait times in the VA, like the, the, the common thread to me, it was that there was executive policy and pressure and fear. And then in these situations, like whether it was Wells Fargo or the VA, you know, it's like, oh, well, we have thousands of unethical people all throughout the company.

Mark Graban (36m 22s):
And I'm like, well, come on. Like that, that was driven, I would say by corporate policy. And if you have that many unethical employees, what the hell is wrong with your hiring process would be another question to ask. So I, I, I always cringe when it seems like low-level people are fired or thrown under the bus for things that seem like the predictable result of executive corporate policy.

Kevin Foster (36m 47s):
Well, that's really true. And also its culture. A lot of it gets down to culture. You take a look at what goes on in Washington, Washington, DC. You see a lot of people who are convicted out of Washington, DC at different levels, whether it's a political appointee or whether it's career type person, but there's a lot of, a lot of pressure for them to keep their jobs or to be able to have an outcome that is predictable by a current administration. So if you're under that kind of, kind of pressure for a good paying job, then you're going to let certain things slide and you're going to be able to rationalize it.

Kevin Foster (37m 27s):
And I heard that from my politician friends that I met in a man in prison, you know, and about how common that was.

Mark Graban (37m 36s):
Wow. Well, I'm Kevin, I'm glad you've used your experiences in a way here that that can help others, you know, providing services, as you were saying to, to help keep people out of prison, hopefully they don't ever need your, your services, you know, described on the website of the incarceration consulting of you'd rather keep people out of prison, then prepare them to help survive it.

Kevin Foster (38m 2s):
Right. Right. Exactly. That's right. Pre incarceration consultant. So a that's right. So

Mark Graban (38m 12s):
Yeah. Well, people, I, I hope in a proactive way, if, if you and your organization want to do more than just check the box and say, well, yeah, we did ethics training. We know how people sit in front of the computer and multitask and don't really pay attention and they're checking the box. But if you want to go deeper, you can hire somebody like Kevin to come in. And, you know, it sounds like sparks deeper thinking in a broader conversation within a company. It sounds like that's your call, Kevin. That's right. Thank you very much for saying, yeah. It's been a lot of fun, Mark. Thank you very much for having me on well, well thank you, Kevin, for, for telling your story and for sharing your favorite mistake and the aftermath and what you learned with us today.

Mark Graban (38m 56s):
So again, our guest has been Kevin Foster. I'll put links in the show notes, but you can find his website again, it business ethics, advisors.com. After I say that a few times, it starts rolling off. So forgive me for my initial stumble my mistake, but thanks. Thanks again, Kevin.

Kevin Foster (39m 14s):
Oh, you're very welcome. Thank you very much. Take care of yourself.

Mark Graban (39m 17s):
Well, thanks again to Kevin Foster for being such a forthcoming guest, interesting guests here today. For more information about Kevin and his work, you can go to markgraban.com/mistake125 as always. I want to thank you for listening. I hope this podcast inspires you to reflect on your own mistakes, how you can learn from them or turn them into a positive I've had listeners tell me that they started being more open and honest about mistakes in their work. And they're trying to create a workplace culture where it's safe to speak up about problems because that leads to more improvement and better business results. If you have feedback or a story to share, you can email me my favorite mistake podcast@gmail.com.

Mark Graban (39m 59s):
And again, our website is myfavoritemistakepodcast.com.

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