Is it better to cheat and win or play fair and lose?

[WhoWants2Know]

I was reading a thread on Facebook where people were posting their best life lessons, and one person had said:

"It's better to cheat and win than play fair and lose."

I feel like I would normally say the opposite, and say at least if you lose, you'll sleep with a clear conscience. But I do wonder sometimes.

For example, recently I was overpaid at work and I queried the figure and paid it back. It turned out that no one would ever have noticed the error if I hadn't pointed it out. It wasn't an amount that would make a big difference to the company, but it would have made a difference to me. My co-workers thought I was crazy to have mentioned it. They were right, weren't they?

Do you think people who "do the right thing" at their own expense just screw themselves over in the long run?

I’d assume they were trying to be funny

I try to do things because they are the right thing to do, not based on whether they benefit me or not. I value integrity, and feel that in your case you showed yourself, your company, and people around you, what it was to have integrity in that moment. There are so many people who claim to believe one thing, then their actions show the opposite, I personally want my actions to reflect my personal philosophies.

Well, I guess I did show integrity... but the CEO was not at all appreciative. She just wanted to punish the person who made the error. And she treated me like crap, pressured me into doing a load of extra work for no extra pay, and in the end I resigned because I felt completely devalued. So I did what I felt was the right thing, but lost out overall.

I suppose it depends whether you are the sort of person who could sleep well knowing you had cheated. I would rather be thought of as a decent , honest person, than as someone who 'wins' at other people's expense. And whatever you may think, it is always at someone's expense.

At least if i don’t cheat I know I got to that place on my own merits. Which is a much better feeling than cheating my way through

You can’t really assess the work situation. You’re presuming that nobody would ever have noticed - it’s quite likely that at some point, payroll or HMRC or whoever would have, and they’d have six years to reclaim the mistake from you.

It sounds like your boss is a knob; though - and if that’s the case and you’re better off out of there, maybe telling them about the error helped you to escape earlier?

It’s one of those situations that you can see as positive or negative depending on your mood.

As for if it’s better to cheat and get ahead? It depends what type of person you are there, too. I wouldn’t be able to enjoy it, I’d be too worried someone would “find out”, and I’d feel awful even if they didn’t.

It depends what the "win" is.

Would I cheat in an exam? No.
Would I cheat to get the house of my dreams? Yes

I cheat when I play family games with the in-laws as it causes me no amount of stress otherwise! We practice the mimes so I don’t feel so crap about always losing

I generally agree that I would want to be an honest and decent person, and that if I cheated part of me would always worry about being found out.

But if I look at the wider world, maybe the people who are most successful don't think the same way.