Trust is crucial in commercial transactions. We want to know if the people we do business with are reliable, but if we don't know them personally, how can we be so sure that we should trust the individual on the other side of the negotiating table or the shop counter? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up questions of trust in business, a matter he became attuned to after a very unpleasant trip to the dentist. He shares his story and takes an historic look at how early proponents of capitalism dealt with questions of trust. He also examines whether Yelp and other social media services have helped to solve the problem of "buyer beware" in business.

When it comes to marketing, negotiations, and salesmanship, companies seem to tolerate a lot of what we might call "little white lies." Does such permissiveness say something essential about business, or does it say more about the type of people who typically conduct it? In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up the role of lying in business. He considers a classic essay on the matter from the Harvard Business Review, and explores whether there is a meaningful distinction to be drawn between a little truth bending and a lot of fraud.

As children, the way our parents look at us often gives us the impression that we are the most important person in the world. Yet as we grow older, we often find that we've gone from being the center of the universe to a tiny cog in a corporate machine. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert takes up why we often feel that companies don't care about us. As he explains, it's not personal, rather, they simply can't afford to.

There is a group of young men online who spend a lot of time talking about what they call "productivity hacks." They are obsessed with how to make their days more productive, but their advice seems more consistent making a promising individual more like a robot than a fully formed human being. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores this productivity fad and ties it to a longer tale about the connection between Christian beliefs about work and the rise of capitalism in the West. He shows us how we became so devoted to utility – and stayed so devoted – even as religious imperatives receded from public life and we forgot the reason why we cared so much in the first place.

Being at the head of the class has many benefits, but we all know that academic success isn't a one way ticket to the C-Suite. What the classroom rewards and what professional success requires are not one and the same thing – a lesson that some Valedictorians among us seem to learn the hard way. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert reflects on what Valedictorian-types should think about as they transition to the real world if they hope to achieve the same elite level of success in their professional lives as they did on standardized tests.

Unless you're a sociopath, it's normal to feel like there are some duties you owe others and to the world around you. We feel compelled to clean up after ourselves when we make a mess or to check in Mom when she isn't feeling well. But when we think about the full scope of the duties that might oblige us – should we do something about climate change or global poverty? – we can quickly find ourselves feeling overwhelmed. In this episode of the In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert explores how we should think about our duties to others and how we can manage the trade-offs among our moral priorities. He also investigates how we can strike a balance between being a good person and a sane one, as well.

When people think about capitalism, they don't think of abstract ideas at the heart of an economic system. They think about the things that system produces: the products, the companies, and perhaps most notably, the people. Just as capitalism has changed with technology and culture over time, so have the people most associated with it, from Benjamin Franklin to the suspendered stockbrokers of the 1980s to the tech titans of today. In this episode of The In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert asks the question who will be the next face of capitalism?

Is the customer always right? In a world in which all sales are final, some buyers are bound to get duped. But if the customer's always right, what can retailers do about unreasonable customers? In this episode of The In-House Ethicist, John Paul Rollert looks for a balance between honoring customers and indulging them.