[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome to a special live episode of Ethicast Reacts, where we're going to cover a cheating scandal at the World Stone Skimming Championship. And joining us to share her insights on what ENC leaders can learn from this is Ethisphere Chief Strategy Officer Erica Salmon Byrne. Erica, as always, welcome to the show. It's good to see you, Bill.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: It's great to see you as well. And I am delighted that this week we are not coming to our audience with a story about a CEO involved in misconduct.
[00:00:39] Speaker B: No, no, no. This time we have something of a much more intimate story here. And let me hit you with some background before we get rolling in this, because this is a pretty unusual story.
The small island of Easedale, Scotland, is the stone skimming capital of the world. Now, stone skimming is not to be confused with stone skipping. Stone skipping is about throwing a rock at the water and seeing how many times you can get it to bounce off the surface before it sinks. Stone skimming is about how far that bouncing stone travels, not how many times it bounces. And if my focusing on that level of detail seems weird to you, then don't tell the more than 2,200 people from 27 countries who traveled to Easdale this year to watch the World Stone skimming championship on September 6th.
The WSSC has been held since 1997, and apart from giving the unusually competitive stone skimming culture and ultimate contest for bragging rights, this family friendly festival raises a ton of money for local charity. Last year, the tourney raised £15,000. The event occurs in a local shale quarry that was flooded by a tidal wave in the late 1800s. There are no qualifications to enter, but the event sells out almost instantly each year.
There are not a lot of rules to the competition, but the most important one is that all skimmers get to throw three stones. Those stones must be selected from the island itself and cannot be more than 3 inches wide or tampered with in any way. To keep things honest, all stones must pass through a metal ring of truth to ensure that they're not too big.
Despite these precautions, competitors this year noticed that some of the stones being thrown looked and behaved as if they had been carved or polished. The matter was investigated and cheating was indeed confirmed. When confronted, the disgraced competitors, quote, expressed their sorrow, sadness, and apologized for bringing the sport into disrepute, end quote. They were disqualified and the event continued. On September 10, the WSSC issued a formal statement about it and it reads in part, quote, we would like to thank all those Competitors and volunteers who brought their concerns to our attention. The integrity of the WSSC is of the utmost importance. We have no hesitation to act when this comes into question. Selecting your own skimming stones before the event is one of the highlights of the competition that many competitors enjoy. If we are aware of future stone doctoring, we will again have no hesitation, no hesitation in disqualifying the competitors in question. And we will be forced to insist all skimmers use stones pre selected by the WSSC organizers. The matter is now considered closed. The cheating scandal has prompted international news coverage ranging from the BBC, New York Times and CBC all, all the way to Vice Outside and even barstool sports. Okay, now that's the, that's the background. Erica, are you ready for some ENC questions on this?
[00:03:16] Speaker A: I am ready for some ENC questions on this one, Bill, because I am sure there are some people out there listening to you and I thinking, all right, what's the way they're going to weave these things together?
[00:03:26] Speaker B: There's always a context and first I'd just like to talk about just ethics in general. You know, we cover some pretty serious ethics and compliance failures on Ethicast React. So folks might be tempted to think that are covering this particular story is kind of playing in shallow water. But I think what caught our attention on this one is that real world stories like this, however unusual they may seem, still provide a valuable way to begin a broader conversation about ethics and compliance. So Erica, I'd love to get your thoughts on that.
[00:03:52] Speaker A: Yep, absolutely. Thanks, Bill. So, yeah, I mean I'm, I'm actually reminded when you and I started chatting, Bill, about doing this story as an ethicast reacts of our coverage of Prankgate earlier in this year. Right. It was same sort of something happening in sport that perhaps a lot of people out there might not necessarily pull through to the work they do on a day to day basis. But there were a ton of through lines. So you know, that was one of the things that caught my eye about this. One of the other things that caught my eye about this is the kind of individualized nature that is at the heart of the competition. There's no qualification to enter, you just have to get one of the spots in order to compete. People travel a long distance. Like I think I read in some of the coverage, you know, one person traveled 13 hours in order to be able to be there. So there's a real, real commitment here. And then you pick through and anybody who's ever skipped a stone or skimmed a stone for that matter, you know, how much time and energy and effort you put into looking for your stone. Right. Where's the right stone? And so this idea that there were people out there with rock polishing kits at hand kind of strikes at the, the very nature of what really is a, a good hearted endeavor on the part of the participants. And so I think there's a ton of lessons that we can take here that I would encourage, you know, folks listening in to you and I to think about, you could, we could talk about motivation, we could talk about incentives, we could think about controls. Right. All of those things are things we think about a lot in our day to day professional lives that you could apply to this story.
[00:05:26] Speaker B: A big part of the culture around this competition, as you mentioned, is that the competitors select their own stones. And as I mentioned in the opening, the WSSC has said that if cheating persists, they'll have to break that tradition and insist that competitors only use pre selected stones.
[00:05:40] Speaker A: That's why we can't have nice things, Bill.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: It's why we can't have nice things. And I really feel bad about the, the very specter of that can kind of cast a cloud on this otherwise inherently good hearted, you know, kind of tradition. But I'm curious, what lesson can ENC professionals take from this particular aspect around the notion that certain ethical lapses like bribery are so called victimless crimes?
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, I think, I think you can think about the victimless crime aspect of a Bill, and you can also think about the impact of the decision making process that the people who were engaged in, you know, this, this cheating behavior went through. So as I mentioned, you know, we, we start with the fact that this is an island without cars. So how did you get your stone circular in the first place?
Are these locals who live on the island who happen to have rock polishing kits that they, you know, drag down into the woods near the, near the quarry? Did they get there ahead of time and select their stones before the day of the competition, take them back to the hotel and polish them up? You know, what, what were the, the plans that somebody had to go through in order to be able to do this in the first place? Because I don't know if you've ever tried to polish shale, Bill, but it's not that easy. Right? I mean, it's, it's, it is a workable stone material, but it's not like, you know, it flakes, it breaks. Right? There's lots of, lots of things. It's, it's primary characteristic is that it floats pretty well. Right? So it's a light stone. It's relatively easy to throw, which is part of, I think, why this. This competition has grown as much as it has. But if you think about, you know, what were the. What. What did that person have to go through in order to be in a position to polish this rock to make it more circular so it would skim farther in the first place?
Okay, so break that down. And then think about what is the equivalent in our company or in our organization of that level of individual autonomy? Where are we giving our employees the ability to choose things on their own, to make decisions on their own? And have we asked ourselves the right kinds of questions about what is our version of a covert rock polishing kit? Right. Is somebody bringing this in on their luggage? Is somebody bringing this in on the ferry?
Because there's always this balance. Right? You know, when we talk to managers about creating environments of strong psychological safety, one of the tests that I often give people leaders is to ask themselves, what were. How would you characterize, rather, the last five situations or issues that your team brought to you on a spectrum of, wow, you should have been able to solve this yourself. To, this is a dumpster fire. Where do they fall?
And, you know, if one is, you should have been able to solve this yourself. And everything your team brings you is a one. You've probably created an environment where people are afraid to make their own decisions and they don't feel like they have autonomy. If everything is a five, you know, your last five problems are all dumpster fires, then you've probably created inadvertently an environment where people are afraid to bring you small problems because they don't trust your reaction.
In an ideal world, you want everything to be a two or a three.
So take that same kind of application here and say to yourself, okay, what are my places where my employees have a lot of autonomy? What is my version of a covert rock polishing kid? And what would be the thing that would motivate somebody to polish their rocks up so that they're so circular that they skim faster, knowing that it really goes against the heart of the values of the organization that they are competing on behalf of?
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Well, I love that answer. And I also love the fact that, you know, you knew enough about shale to perhaps, you know, really, you know, attend this competition yourself. So that's today. I learned something about you, and I'm never going to forget it. It's lovely.
[00:09:19] Speaker A: I have skimmed a rock or two in my time, Bill.
I'm not. There are a lot of people in my world that are better at it than I am, but I've skimmed a rock.
[00:09:27] Speaker B: Well, my next question for you is about organizational justice. The cheating in this case was detected by competitors who raised their hands and. And reported the misconduct to event organizers. What's our takeaway here about the importance of organizational justice as a pillar of ethical culture? And is there any context in which organizational justice can be too small to matter?
[00:09:46] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, first off, to your latter question, I would say everybody has their own definition of small, Bill. Right? To the people who traveled tens of thousands of miles to be at this competition, it. It being fair is not a small matter. And so while it might be small to us, well, you and I have spent enough time in this story. It's not small to us anymore, Bill, but. Well, it might seem small that that organizational justice is in many ways in the eye of the beholder in terms of its level of importance.
The thing that I think is very interesting about this story and actually goes to a different fcast reacts Bill, that you and I did on the firing of the Nestle CEO is these were people who were participants in the contest who saw something that they believed to be fundamentally unfair and raised their hand. So similar sort of situation of like, palace intrigue. Everybody's not getting treated the same because of these inappropriate relationships inside the workplace that you and I talked about with the Nestle CEO and anybody out there who missed Bill and I reacting to that story. You can find it in our. In our feed.
I would say that a couple of things here. One, obviously, the event organizers took this seriously.
People felt comfortable raising this concern. People were capable of recognizing an infraction when they saw it, right? So if we think about Bill, the work we do here at Ethisphere Measuring Speak up culture, one of the first sets of questions we ask is, do you even know enough to know that something's wrong?
What are your perceptions of the training? Does it give you the information you need to do your job effectively? What are your perceptions, the function? Do you trust that it would look into things appropriately and. And equally? And here we had a group, we had an audience that knew what wrong looked like, right? They knew that perfectly circular stones were not a dime a dozen in this quarry, and instead, people were finding the best possible stones, but they were rarely perfect, right? And so you had. You knew what you were looking at. You were able to identify that it was wrong, and you were confident enough to go to the event organizers and say, this is this is not okay.
And those are all the hallmarks of a strong speak up culture. Yeah.
[00:12:01] Speaker B: Well, I have one more question for you and well, in an interview with the New York Times, John Jennings, this year's winner of the overall competition and the first American ever to do so, by the way, said, quote, some people see glory as a different thing. I see it as following the rules, doing what I'm supposed to, and winning in true fashion. Some people see glory as winning at all cost, end quote. Would just love to get your thoughts on that quote. I thought that was a really terrific statement about, about all this.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look, it's, it's at the, at the end of the day, that's often what we mean by organizational justice. Right. We're operating inside a system where we're all playing by the same rules and we feel like that system will treat us fairly based upon our performance. It's the pure definition of a meritocracy. And when you have people that mess around with that, you know, people are going to have very, very strong reactions, which is, is exactly what we saw here. It's part of the reason why this has become such a story is, is because of, of both the way that, that the organizers responded, which was entirely, you know, appropriate and, and straightforward, and also, you know, the, the way that, that many of the people who were participating in the competition felt about the fact that people decided to, to bend the rules. And I just, I, you know, I mean, I love that quote. I think, I think the world of it as you and I discussed, Bill, when we were prepping for this. And it also makes me think about the application of the fraud triangle to this particular scenario. So, you know, we talked a little bit about individual autonomy and the ability to select your own stones and kind of what that level of, of self responsibility can do to people who are inclined to bend the rules.
We have, you know, but we have, we haven't really talked about the other two components of the fraud triangle.
So of course there's opportunity, which we've covered, but what about motive and incentives? Right? What, what incentivized someone to decide that they would, that they were going to win this contest at all costs, even if it meant, you know, going against the, the organizers of the event in terms of the way it was supposed to be conducted? What does it mean that you decide to, you know, to engage in, in this kind of, of rock polishing, rock shaving behavior before the, the competition begins?
There's no money involved in this competition. Right. And you don't there's no cash prize. We're not talking about somebody winning money. It's bragging rights in a trophy. Right.
And I, I think that is, that is a, an interesting thing for all of us as ethics and compliance professionals to spend some time thinking about what is our version of bragging rights and a trophy. And if we're right, Bill, as we often say here at, at the sphere that the four lovers you can pull on to influence a culture are who you hire, who you fire, who you praise and who you promote.
Do we spend enough time thinking about praise? Because at the end of the day, that's all this was, right? It was, you know, the opportunity to stand there with the trophy and get your picture taken in front of the waters of the quarry with your winning stones.
It's, you know, that, that and, and then be able to go home and say that you won the 2025 stone skimming competition, which, absent the allegations of cheating, none of us ever would have heard of. So, you know, it's, it is a, I think it is a good instructive lesson in human behavior for all of us to think about in terms of, you know, what is our version of the stone skimming trophy inside our organizations. We all have one.
[00:15:18] Speaker B: Yeah, we do. We do. Well, Erica, thank you so much again for coming back onto the show and to cover this particular news story. As you mentioned, it may seem like a small transgression at a small event, but it felt pretty big to the people who witnessed it and who raised their hand. And I think, you know, it showcased that ethics scales upward, but it never dwindles downward. So thank you once again for coming on the show and talking about this.
[00:15:38] Speaker A: Absolutely my pleasure, Bill. Anytime at all. And you know, you know, you know well, and our audience knows well that if news stories happen, big or small, you can count on Bill and I finding the ethics and compliance lens on every one of them.
[00:15:51] Speaker B: Well, for plenty of free ethics and compliance resources on conflicts of interest, speak up, culture, value based leadership, and much, much more, please visit the Ethisphere resource
[email protected] resources. And since I know there's somebody out there who really wants to try their hand at stone skimming, I'll just say the 2026 World Stone Skimming Championship is next September, exact date TBA. So watch www.stoneSkimming.com for details. Anyway, to appear as a guest on this program and to share an ethics and compliance best practice or success story, stone skimming or other eyes, please drop us a line@the sphere.com at thecast. Thank you so much for joining us. We hope you've enjoyed the show. For new episodes each week, sure to subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you don't mind, please share us with a colleague. It really helps out. That's all for now, but until next time, remember two things. One, cheaters never prosper, and two, strong ethics is good business. Bye now.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Bye all.
