To “toe the line” means to conform to a rule or standard. But what happens in your career when you’re asked to cross the line, even if it’s “just once”? It will be for the “good” of the company or your job. Carefully you ease over the line without smudging it, do what you’re told to do, then hurry back to the “right side” with a sigh of relief. You got away with it and no one’s the wiser. You’re a “good company man or woman.”

But once you’ve proven your willingness to violate an ethical principle, it’s bound to happen again. The second time around it is a little easier. You may be careless and your toe drags across the line, leaving a mark that follows you. This time you may work a little harder and longer at what you’ve been openly told or implicitly advised to do. It’s not quite as painful this time. You’ve done it before without consequences, so why not do it again and look good to your superiors or even to your peers? No one has to know just how you accomplished those results. Again and again you step across the line, always in quest of “doing the right thing by the company or someone else,” failing to notice that the chalk line is blurring and you’re leaving tracks. Soon it’s a matter of business as usual and you don’t even remember there WAS a line—it’s indistinct and blurred into dust. That’s how easily, quickly and inadvertently it happens. You’re violating the ethical code and you never realized it was happening until it’s too late.

Someday in your career, you’ll be asked to cross the line, or maybe even cross it just this once.