Page 90 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

CHAPTER 8

LEADERS ACT

WITH INTEGRITY

In their personal and professional lives, great leaders demonstrate honor
and integrity at all times. When I was a college student at the U.S. Air
Force Academy, it was drilled into us that we should always do what is right
regardless of the personal or professional consequences.
As chairman of the Cadet Wing Honor Committee at the Air Force
Academy, I was responsible for instilling a sense of honor among the cadets
in our wing. The honor code we vowed to uphold stated, “We will not lie,
cheat, or steal nor tolerate among us anyone who does.” During my year
as Honor Committee chairman, I conducted over 250 investigations and
convened 106 honor boards. I personally served as chairman—which is like
being an administrative judge—on seventy-two of those boards. Eight
cadets were chosen at random from the cadet wing to serve on juries that
studied evidence and heard witness testimony in each case.
In my quasi-judicial role as chairman of the honor board, I participated
in the questioning of witnesses and even sat in on the deliberations to make
sure that the cadet jurors did not go off on a tangent. On the seventy-two
boards over which I presided, sixty cadets charged with an honor violation
were dismissed from the academy for violating the honor code.

A senior cadet who was a friend of mine had completed his academic
classes and was awaiting graduation ceremonies when some friends of his
from high school came to visit him. As his parents drove across the country

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