This sounds obvious, but honesty requires all of the components of integrity. If honesty isn’t part of your individual DNA, you will fail.

There are many ways a leader can be dishonest. Some are small and some are big, but all are bad. A few could land you in prison.

Here’s just one example.

Remember the Tyco scandal? Today, the Tyco name can be found on hundreds of products from fire protection devices to biometric identification systems. But it also stands for one of the most notorious cases of personal greed in the corner office. Among many other crimes, CEO Dennis Kozlowski and two others took millions of dollars of low-interest and interest-free loans from the company, which they never repaid. According to the Wall Street Journal, more than $11 million of Tyco’s cash paid for antiques, art, and other furnishings in Kozlowski’s New York Fifth Avenue duplex, including a notorious $6,000 floral-patterned shower curtain in gold and burgundy. This was in addition to the $18 million the company paid for the unit, which Tyco considered a corporate apartment.

Kozlowski had the company pay half the cost of a $2.1-million birthday party on the Italian island of Sardinia for his wife, who was a former waitress at a restaurant near Tyco’s headquarters in New Hampshire. Subsequently, this “shareholder meeting”-slash-birthday party became known as the “Tyco Roman Orgy.”

Okay, you’re laughing. But Dennis Kozlowski was arrested, convicted, and spent six and a half years in federal prison. Nothing fun about that!

Innovation Leaders Know…

Dishonesty may provide short-term gain, but ultimately long-term pain. Innovation leaders are led by a moral compass that guides them always to the right decision. They don’t take credit for someone else’s ideas. They don’t ask for money for phony innovation projects that they know aren’t going anywhere.

As the chemical company billionaire Jon Huntsman, Sr. wrote in his book Winners Never Cheat, “There are no moral shortcuts in the game of business or life. There are, basically, three kinds of people: the unsuccessful, the temporarily successful, and those who become and remain successful. The difference is character.”