In nonprofit organisations, this misunderstanding can become heartbreaking.
There is a belief that whenever an organisation is helping communities, somebody somewhere must be endlessly funding the work.
The reality is often very different.
Many nonprofit founders use their personal salaries, savings, businesses, vehicles, equipment, phones and relationships to keep programmes alive.
They write proposal after proposal hoping for support. They receive rejection after rejection. They stretch one donation across several activities and quietly absorb expenses because they refuse to disappoint the communities they promised to serve.
When someone steals resources from such an organisation, the loss does not simply belong to the founder.
It may belong to the child whose learning materials can no longer be purchased, the community whose programme has to be reduced or the young person whose opportunity disappears because someone decided the organisation ‘had enough.’
We also have to be careful not to use poor treatment in some workplaces to explain away dishonesty in others.
If an employer is mistreating you, that needs to be addressed. If you are being underpaid, disrespected or asked to work under unreasonable conditions, there are legitimate questions to raise about that employer and how the business is being run.
But none of that makes it acceptable to steal, lie about work you have not done, misuse company resources or deliberately work against the organisation while continuing to collect a salary from it.
If the workplace has become so bad that you can no longer work there with integrity, then perhaps the real conversation is about whether you should still be there.
At the same time, employers need to ask themselves why some workers seem to perform only when they are being watched, shouted at or constantly followed up with.
I have seen situations where people complain, rightly, about being treated harshly at work, yet those same people will admit that the moment they are given some freedom, the work stops moving.
Why should someone have to treat another adult badly before the work they agreed to do gets done?
And why would any of us want a workplace where that becomes necessary?
There has to be something between mistreating people and allowing people to take advantage of being treated well.
This is where the conversation gets uncomfortable, because sometimes a good working environment is mistaken for a lack of accountability.
A flexible employer is taken for granted. A kind manager is considered weak. An owner who does not stand over employees all day eventually discovers that things are not being done.
Then, when that owner begins checking everything, asking for reports, restricting access and demanding proof of completion, the complaint becomes that the workplace is being micromanaged.
So where is the balance?
At what point does an employee take responsibility for being someone who can be trusted to work without being policed, and at what point does an employer accept that trust alone was never enough to run the organsation?
Perhaps, one of the greatest failures in our business culture is that we wait until something becomes catastrophic before we believe it deserves accountability.
We become outraged when millions disappear from institutions, yet we remain strangely comfortable with everyday dishonesty because the amounts appear insignificant.
We condemn corruption in public offices while excusing employees who quietly help themselves to resources because ‘it is only a little.’
We criticise people who abuse power while lying to supervisors about work we never completed.
The scale may be different, but the willingness to justify dishonesty often begins with the same belief that no real harm has been done.
That mindset eventually raises another difficult question for employers:
How are we hiring?
Many businesses are desperate for good people. Vacancies need to be filled. Work needs to continue.
Someone arrives with a polished CV, interviews well and has somebody willing to recommend them.
That is often enough.
Yet, how often do employers genuinely contact previous workplaces? How often do they ask meaningful questions rather than simply confirming dates of employment?
How often do they investigate whether the person they are about to entrust with money, confidential information, inventory, children or vulnerable people has demonstrated the character required for that responsibility?
This does not mean every former employer should be believed without question. People leave jobs for many reasons, and some workplaces are toxic enough that leaving is the healthiest decision someone can make.
Neither should a person’s entire future be destroyed because of gossip or an unproven accusation.
But responsible hiring requires curiosity.
It requires asking enough questions to understand who is entering your organisation, especially when that person will eventually gain access to the things you have spent years building.
The harder issue arises when serious misconduct actually occurred and the former employer chooses silence.
Many compassionate business owners know this dilemma well.
Someone steals.
Someone lies repeatedly.
Someone breaches confidentiality or misuses organisational resources.
Technically, there may be grounds to pursue formal action, but then another question begins to weigh heavily on the employer:
What happens to this person’s future?
What happens to their family?
Will reporting them make it impossible for them to ever work again?
Sometimes the employer absorbs the loss, dismisses the person quietly and chooses not to pursue the matter any further.
It is an act that can come from compassion, but compassion should also make us think about the people who come after us.
If someone leaves one organisation because of serious misconduct and another employer unknowingly hires them without asking why they left, who is carrying the risk created by that silence?
If the behavior is repeated somewhere else, was the previous employer merciful or did they unintentionally transfer an unresolved problem into another workplace?
These are not easy questions, and they should not have easy answers.
People deserve opportunities to change, but meaningful second chances should never require pretending that accountability is unnecessary.
This is why businesses and nonprofit organisations need stronger systems than personal trust alone.
Too many organisations begin as families rather than institutions.
We hire friends, relatives, former volunteers and people recommended by people we know.
Because everyone appears familiar, financial procedures become relaxed, documents become easily accessible, passwords are shared, inventory is poorly monitored and responsibilities overlap until nobody is entirely sure where accountability begins or ends.
Then something goes missing, and the entire organisation is left trying to determine who can be trusted.
Trust is valuable, but it is not a system.
Good systems protect honest people just as much as they expose dishonest ones.
Clear job descriptions, financial procedures, inventory records, documented approvals, confidentiality policies, appropriate background and reference checks, defined access to sensitive information, performance reviews and proper disciplinary processes do not create cold workplaces; they create responsible ones.
They allow employees to know what is expected of them, employers to manage fairly and organisations to survive beyond personalities.
As Ghana continues encouraging entrepreneurship, youth employment and innovation, we must also become serious about the culture inside the organisations we are asking people to build.
Starting a business is one achievement.
Sustaining one is another.
A brilliant idea can fail because of poor internal accountability.
A well-funded nonprofit can be weakened by dishonesty.
A passionate team can quietly destroy morale when trust is repeatedly broken and nobody is willing to confront it.
The future of our businesses will depend not only on investment and opportunity but also on the everyday decisions people make when nobody believes those decisions are important enough to notice.
Maybe that is where this conversation truly belongs-not in the headlines after something enormous has happened, but in the ordinary workplaces where character is quietly being formed every day.
In the office where someone chooses whether to tell the truth about an unfinished assignment.
In the kitchen where someone decides whether food belongs to the business or to them.
At the reception desk where confidential information is either protected or shared.
In the manager’s office where accountability is either documented or ignored because confrontation feels uncomfortable.
In the boardroom where leaders decide whether systems matter more than convenience.
It is easy to read an article like this and immediately think of somebody else.
The dishonest employee.
The terrible employer.
The colleague who stole.
The manager who lied.
The founder who never created proper systems.
The organisation that failed its workers.
Perhaps the more valuable response is to sit with the uncomfortable possibility that the article may apply to us in different ways.
If we own businesses, are we building structures that protect the organisations we keep asking others to help us grow?
If we employ people, are we creating workplaces where dignity and accountability can exist together?
If we are employees, interns or volunteers, are we treating another person’s property, time and trust as carefully as we would want ours treated?
If we know someone has been dishonest, are we protecting them from consequences because it is compassionate, or because confronting wrongdoing is inconvenient?
These questions are not pleasant, but neither is watching a business slowly collapse under the weight of things everyone once considered too small to matter.
We often say we want stronger businesses in Ghana.
We want sustainable nonprofits.
We want organisations that create jobs, transform communities and survive beyond their founders.
Those dreams require more than funding, innovation and ambition.
They require people whose word means something, leaders willing to build systems instead of depending entirely on goodwill and workplaces where being treated with humanity never becomes an excuse for behaving without integrity.
The greatest threat to a business is not always the competitor across the street.
Sometimes it is already inside the building.
Sometimes it has access to the office keys, the filing cabinet, the storeroom or the organisation’s finances.
Sometimes it sits quietly in meetings applauding the vision while contributing very little to protecting it.
And sometimes, if we are brave enough to admit it, the failure begins with the owner who trusted without building accountability around that trust.
That is the conversation we need to have.
Not because it is comfortable.
But because every thriving business, every credible nonprofit and every institution hoping to outlive its founder will eventually have to answer one question: