Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our

Host: The city was a vast grid of glass and shadow, the skyscrapers gleaming like monuments to ambition under the pale winter moon. Inside one of them, high above the noise and neon, a conference room lay in half-darkness — its windows reflecting the quiet ruin of another day’s negotiations.

The clock on the wall ticked, slow and deliberate, as if measuring not time but the erosion of conviction. Papers were scattered across the table — contracts, proposals, projections — each one a fragment of someone’s truth, or someone’s lie.

Jack stood by the window, his hands in his pockets, staring at the city below like a man surveying both a kingdom and a battlefield. Jeeny leaned against the edge of the table, her arms folded, her expression calm but unyielding — a quiet storm waiting for the right moment to break.

Jeeny: “Kerry Stokes once said, ‘Ethics or simple honesty is the building blocks upon which our whole society is based, and business is a part of our society, and it's integral to the practice of being able to conduct business, that you have a set of honest standards.’”

Jack: (without turning) “I’ve heard it. Sounds noble. Looks good in an annual report.”

Host: The light from the city glimmered across his face, revealing a trace of irony — or maybe fatigue — in his eyes.

Jeeny: “You say that like honesty’s a marketing strategy.”

Jack: “In business, it often is. You can’t afford to be purely honest, Jeeny. Not when competitors are twisting numbers, hiding losses, buying silence. You think ethics pays dividends?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Not immediately, but inevitably. Everything built on deceit collapses. Look at Enron, look at Lehman Brothers. Empires crumble not from competition — but from corruption.”

Jack: (turning to face her) “And yet people keep building new ones. That’s the cycle. Someone cheats, gets caught, falls. Someone else replaces them, same game, new slogan. You can’t moralize the marketplace.”

Jeeny: “You can’t survive it without morals either. Without trust, every transaction becomes warfare. Every handshake becomes a lie.”

Host: Her voice was steady, but beneath it was the tremor of belief — that kind of fragile faith only idealists still carry. Jack, meanwhile, had the look of a man who had seen too much — the kind of fatigue that turns idealism into arithmetic.

Jack: “You ever tried running a business with perfect honesty? You won’t last six months. Investors pull out the moment your transparency stops flattering them. Clients walk when you stop bending truth to their comfort. The system isn’t built for saints.”

Jeeny: “No. But it falls apart without them.”

Host: The rain began to fall, faint and silvery, tracing thin lines down the windows — like the world itself was weeping for the arguments it had heard too many times before.

Jeeny: “Honesty isn’t a luxury, Jack. It’s oxygen. You can hold your breath for a while, but eventually, the company — the people — suffocate.”

Jack: “You talk like ethics is simple. It’s not. It’s trade-offs. You can be honest or survive — pick one. When you’re responsible for hundreds of employees, families, livelihoods, you start to see shades of honesty that aren’t so black and white.”

Jeeny: “So you lie for the greater good?”

Jack: “I protect what I can. I choose which truths hurt less.”

Host: The room filled with the sound of the rain, soft, persistent, merciless. Jeeny’s eyes darkened, not with judgment, but with sadness.

Jeeny: “You sound like a man who’s lost his reflection.”

Jack: (quietly) “Maybe. Or maybe I’ve learned that mirrors distort too.”

Host: He walked toward the table, placing both hands on it, the papers beneath him shifting, fluttering like wings of trapped doves.

Jack: “Tell me, Jeeny. When your team’s on the verge of collapse, when investors are threatening lawsuits, when you’ve got employees counting on your next move — do you tell them the company’s dying? Or do you tell them you’ll fix it?”

Jeeny: “You tell them the truth — that it’s hard, that it’s uncertain, but that you’ll fight for them. You give them reality, not illusion. Because once they stop believing you, no amount of money will make them believe in the company.”

Jack: “Idealistic. Dangerous.”

Jeeny: “Human.”

Host: Her word hung in the air, simple, bare, but it struck something deep inside him — a place even he hadn’t visited in years.

Jack: (after a long pause) “You want to know something? The first time I ever lied in business, it was for someone else’s sake. A supplier was late, my boss told me to say the shipment was in transit. I did. It felt small, harmless. Then came the next lie — another delay, another excuse. By the time I was the boss, the habit had a name: ‘strategy.’”

Jeeny: “That’s how corruption starts — not with greed, but with convenience.”

Jack: (smirking) “And you think you’d have done better?”

Jeeny: “I’d have done slower. Maybe smaller. But not hollow.”

Host: The words cut deeper than either intended. The lights from the street flickered, as though the universe itself was holding judgment.

Jack: “You think ethics can feed everyone? That honesty can scale? Wake up, Jeeny. The economy rewards what works, not what’s right.”

Jeeny: “Then the economy is starving. Because what’s right is what sustains. Dishonesty may build quickly, but it rots faster. Ask Bernie Madoff. Ask anyone who thought cleverness was a substitute for conscience.”

Jack: “You’re quoting headlines. I’m living payrolls.”

Jeeny: “Then you should know better than anyone how fragile trust is. You can rebuild revenue, Jack. You can’t rebuild faith.”

Host: He stared at her for a long moment, his jaw clenched, his eyes flickering between defiance and understanding. The rain outside softened, turning into a steady hush — the sound of something unresolved learning to settle.

Jack: “You really think honesty can survive this world?”

Jeeny: “No. But it’s the only thing that makes it worth surviving.”

Host: The room grew still. Somewhere below, a car horn echoed, a sound of life continuing without them. Jack finally sat down, the chair creaking beneath him, as though the weight of his choices had at last found a place to rest.

Jack: (quietly) “Maybe you’re right. Maybe honesty isn’t a strategy. Maybe it’s the only way to look in the mirror and not see a stranger.”

Jeeny: (softly) “And maybe that’s all society ever needed — not perfect people, just ones who don’t vanish behind their own lies.”

Host: The lights of the city dimmed, the rain turned to a faint mist, and the windows glowed with a subtle reflection — not of the room, but of two figures caught between worlds: the pragmatist and the believer, the cynic and the conscience.

They said nothing more. They didn’t need to.

The papers on the table shifted in the draft, one sheet falling to the floor — an unsigned contract, blank at the bottom, waiting for a signature that would mean something again.

And as the clock ticked into the quiet, the city below breathed, not with power or profit, but with a faint, lingering hope — that somewhere, someone was still trying to build their world on something honest.