When you're not sure, don't

Here's the keystone of the whole week, and it's almost embarrassingly simple. Most small dishonesty announces itself in advance. There's a flicker, a half-second where part of you reaches for the explanation you'd give if caught. The expense that's "basically work-related." The corner cut that "probably won't matter." The thing you'll round up because "everyone does." You're already building the defense. That flicker is the whole signal.

Cicero gave the rule plainly: "they give who bid us not to do a thing, when there is a doubt whether it be right or wrong; for righteousness shines with a brilliance of its own, but doubt is a sign that we are thinking of a possible wrong" (De Officiis 1.30, Miller). The honest thing tends to feel obvious. It doesn't require a rehearsed story. When you find yourself drafting one, that's not honesty deciding — that's something else.

This works on the small stuff precisely because the small stuff is where you talk yourself into it. The server deciding whether to mention the dish was reheated, the freelancer deciding whether the hours are quite real, the cashier and the drawer that's two dollars over — when the rightness shines, you just act. When it needs an argument, the argument is the tell.