Here's a novel idea: To teach MBA students about ethics, hire a lawbreaker -- or in this case, a reformed lawbreaker.

Nobody knows the slippery slope better than Patrick Kuhse, who spoke April 5 in visiting assistant professor of ethics Dana Radcliffe's Ethical Issues in Finance and Accounting class at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, for the second year in a row.

Kuhse, who went on the lam with his family and ended up spending four years in prisons in the United States and Central America for his white-collar crimes, said he used the time in jail to examine the faulty thought processes that put him there.

He asked the students whether they considered themselves ethical people -- producing a large show of hands. He then asked them how they rationalized illegally downloading music and movies via the Internet and got a range of responses, from "I won't use it for profits" to "The record companies make a ton of money anyway, so …" Kuhse finished the sentence, "So you're entitled to something for free, right?"

Kuhse then described how his own false sense of entitlement arose. Raised Catholic, he grew up in Iowa in a family with strong ethical values. But as an undergraduate at Arizona State University, removed from his comfort zone, he joined a fraternity and learned to party more than he studied. After visiting the huge houses of friends from wealthy families, "I had a value shift," he recalled. "I began to see my parents as old-fashioned and started to equate success with money and with gaining power and influence."

His mother told him he had changed, but he failed to heed the warning, instead seeking to get rich as a broker on Wall Street in the '80s, where "the trading floor was like roller derby with no pads." As the self-described "Jerry Maguire of financial planning," he quickly acquired a feeling of "supreme optimism. There's no downside, you aren't going to fail, you're above the law and can do anything you want." Some high-profile super optimists in that mold, he said, are former CEOs Dennis Kozlowski of Tyco and Kenneth Lay of Enron.

To rationalize his misgivings at not being fully aboveboard with clients, Kuhse said he told himself, "I know more about my product than they will ever know. I don't want to confuse them with the facts."

Then Kuhse was asked to be an investment adviser to a friend who managed the multi-billion dollar financial portfolio of the state of Oklahoma but lacked experience. His friend, who was the only person reviewing investment bids, advised him to bump up his commission. His wife warned him that his actions "sounded illegal," but "I had my greed goggles on," Kuhse said, so he kept it up.

When a disgruntled state employee got fired and tipped off the FBI about the questionable goings on, Kuhse's attorney advised him to tell all to avoid a lengthy jail sentence. Kuhse said he didn't understand the depth of his troubles until "Nightline" news program staff called, informing him that "Nightline" was doing a story on him.

The family, including two young children, fled in the middle of the night from their California home to Costa Rica. After three years his wife returned to the United States with the children and eventually filed for divorce. But Kuhse kept running for nearly a year more before deciding to turn himself in.

In jail, "I finally realized it wasn't all about me, and I started to chisel away at that sense of entitlement," he said. After that epiphany, he decided to admit his mistakes publicly, first to his children and family and then to society, through public-speaking engagements such as the ones at the Johnson School.

Kuhse warned the MBA students about "situational ethics -- changing your ethics based on the situation" and about the big consequences of small lies that can escalate. He told them to avoid making snap decisions about actions they're not sure are ethical. Instead they should "lose some sleep" over them and also seek advice from at least one person in their lives whose moral counsel they trust. "You can never have enough mentors," he said.

Sean Woolley, MBA '06, called Kuhse's talk "insightful and valuable for MBA students." Woolley, who will work in biotechnology finance after graduation and may be asked to weigh dollars and cents against human suffering, said: "It's helpful to come to lectures like this and see there is more to business that just marketing and money. You have to be able to live with yourself."