Just about every compliance certification has the employee sign at the bottom. We have been signing letters and contracts at the end for millenia.
But maybe there is a way to increase ethical performance by moving that signature to the top.
Lisa L. Shu, Nina Mazar, Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely, and Max H. Bazerman recently published a paper that found differences in compliance/ethical performance depending on whether the participant signed first or at the end.
In one experiment, the subjects took a test and scored it themselves. They would be paid based on their performance and reimbursed for their expenses incurred in attending the test. After self-scoring the test they went into another room to self report their income on a tax form. There were three forms:
- One with a certification at the beginning that all information is true
- A second with the same certification, but at the end
- A third with no certification
The test and reporting was set up to be very easy to cheat, with a simple and immediate cash reward for cheating. You should not be surprised that cheating was rampant.
With the third form, with no certification, cheating occurred 64% of the time. With the certification at the bottom, the cheating actually rose to 79%. The winner, with the certification at the beginning, only had a 37% cheat rate.
Moving the certification to the beginning had a dramatic, positive effect on reducing cheating.
The paper includes several other similar experiments with the same results. A slightly different test involved word puzzles. Those that signed an honesty pledge before engaging in the cheating experiment ended up solving more of the ethics-related words than the others.
The authors theorize that the certification at the top pre-sets the person to start thinking more ethically. If they don’t hit the certification until the end, they have already supplied the information with whatever ethical slant they may have.
I’m going to re-think how I design my certification. At the top will be a certification that all of the information is true and correct, before they start filling in the information.
Sources:
- Signing at the Top: The Key to Preventing Tax Fraud? by Carmen Nobel
- When to Sign on the Dotted Line? Signing First Makes Ethics Salient and Decreases Dishonest Self-Reports by Lisa L. Shu, Nina Mazar, Francesca Gino, Dan Ariely, and Max H. Bazerman
