The Partridge Problem: Why Self-Righteousness Corrupts Judgement

A note to young leaders.

Two game hunters are locked in a lawsuit. One of the litigants, fearing his case is weak, asks his lawyer whether it might help to send the judge a brace of partridges.

The lawyer is aghast: this judge is famous for his probity, and a gift of this kind would most certainly sink the case. The hunter nods in pensive agreement.

Months later when the case is over – and won – the hunter invites his lawyer to his home for a celebratory dinner:

“I did end up sending the partridges to the judge by the way. Not in my name though – I sent them in the name of my opponent.”

—

I love this story – mainly because the villain of the piece is not the villain.

The hunter is merely a rogue. The real villain is the judge. He should’ve laughed, sent the partridges back, and judged the case on its merits.

I’ve met this judge. So have you. He is, on a bad day, all of us – because there’s no pleasure quite so reliable as the pleasure of being right about one’s own goodness. It’s the one form of intoxication for which nobody ever gets pulled over.

Institutions spend fortunes training their staff about gifts, probity and conflicts of interest. None of this is wasted. But it rests on an assumption that the danger is greed: that people go wrong because they want something. The subtler danger is identity: that people go wrong because they need to remain a certain kind of person in their own eyes.

Greed can be policed. Self-regard polices itself, badly.

Greed and self-righteousness lead ultimately to the same place: the verdict goes to the man who sent the birds. But self-righteousness is worse than greed – the corrupt sometimes lie awake at night; the self-righteous sleep very well.

This is not an argument for abandoning principle, which would be a remedy worse than the disease. It’s an argument for holding your principles the way a good cricketer holds a bat: firmly, but not so tightly that every edge carries to the slips.

So by all means be incorruptible. Just don’t be proud of it.

Pride is where the partridges get in.