Cheating perhaps, I can work with people who have had emotional reasons, but as the kid of parents who went through this (when I was an adult), the thing I will never understand is the ability for people to just endlessly lie to themselves and the people they supposedly love. That ability to lie to “trusted” friends and family members potentially for years on end is a huge no for me and I wouldn’t trust anyone who had done that in their personal lives.

Sorry for expressing it this way, but what's naive is thinking your colleague is loyal. It is much simpler to just consider that he hasn't found a situation to screw you and the rest of the team yet, and that when such a situation happens, there's a chance he will act accordingly.

To me he has simply been unmasked as someone who is doing whatever he is currently incentivized to do, rather than someone who respects agreements. When you respect agreements it means you stick to it even when the situation changes to make it less favorable. When people do this it makes a lot of things much easier, since agreements can be relied on.

If you've ever been screwed over in business, you'll find your partners go to all sorts of lengths to pretend they were within their legal rights, which are conveniently just next to their moral obligations.

What is even more naive is thinking there are no other colleagues "that they haven't found a situation to screw you and the rest of the team yet, and that when such a situation happens, there's a chance they will act accordingly".

Just because you do not know whether someone cheated on their spouse does not mean they did or didn't or would or wouldn't. It means you don't know.

And just because someone did or was willing to do something in one context does not mean they would do so in another different context, but they would probably do so in a similar context.

The point is you now have information on that one guy. You won't know who the other cheaters are, but you know this one.

For an employee or contractor in a limited role, sure, whatever.

For a partner, business is rational until it's not. If things start to go wrong. If lots of money is on the line and the contract is not iron clad.

I've seen enough times in my life that people who justify shady actions with excuses in one area of life will do the same in another, when the stakes are high.

It's a filter. Not meant to be 100% accurate.

As long as it filters false positives fine, false negatives are casualties.

We all have some filters in similar ways. I wouldn't want to work with a guy that shows violence to their family. I just don't want it. Simple as that.

Sure it's a filter, but I think the point is that the sensitivity / specificity of said filter might be below 50% for all you know. I doubt anyone in this thread has performed thorough analysis to try to determine either of those numbers.

I guess with the way ESGs are going, people seem to be paying attention to more than financials :)

This is some sort of an ESG

> one of my moost loyal colleagues is cheating on his wife for years. and yet, he is loyal to the tasks and to the company.

i'm sure his wife thinks he is 'loyal' too :^)

Or maybe his wife doesn't think about his feelings much at all.

I don’t know. I think cheating can be rational and business emotional. It’s never black and white.

I’m going through a business situation at the moment where rationality on both sides has been very low.

When I saw the article title I had the thought that what I’m going through is like a divorce and maybe I could get some insight from the article.

Great article but didn’t help me at all :)

> one of my moost loyal colleagues is cheating on his wife for years. and yet, he is loyal to the tasks and to the company.

His wife: “My husband is cheating at work and scamming his company, and yet he is the most loyal husband to me and our kid.”

> one of my moost loyal colleagues is cheating on his wife for years. and yet, he is loyal to the tasks and to the company.

This loyal colleague was probably extremely loyal to his wife for a time, too.

Puritanism might be the word you were looking for.