Last week, I discussed how some individuals and companies have on occasion conducted themselves in less than a stellar way. But it’s easy to look at others. How do I stand up to such scrutiny? How do I conduct myself in business?

As with many companies during the last banking crisis, we found ourselves struggling financially. A structural engineer hired us to perform emergency repairs on a recently constructed shopping center. We performed the work and submitted an invoice. Within a month, the Resolution Trust Corporation (the shopping center owner) requested an original copy of our invoice, which we sent. Two weeks later, we received a payment from the engineering firm – and two weeks after that, we received a duplicate payment from the RTC. The extra payment arrived at a time we needed additional funds. But we sent it back. The money was not ours.

Think everyone does that? A local contractor / developer that I had a worked for when I first moved to New Mexico received double payment from a client. The contractor kept the payment for close to a year–until his client discovered the overpayment. Of course, the contractor was not invited to submit a proposal on his client’s next project. Fifteen years later, our roofer was double paid by us and by our client. A year later, when reconciling payments, we discovered the overpayment. It took several months for the roofing subcontractor to return the overpayment. We no longer request quotations from that company.

But here’s the best story. We issued a check to Aztec Mechanical for $119,000. It was a mistake; the check should have been issued to Aztec Grading. The day Aztec Mechanical received the check, they called us and said thanks for the check, but we think this is a mistake. We picked up the check that afternoon. Aztec Mechanical later was our subcontractor on our own building.

I’ve said it many times: our corporate values are who we are. They are also the standard by which we evaluate our subcontractors and suppliers.