Steinheist: The story of South Africa's biggest corporate scandal
No matter how smart you might think these guys are, they are just as fallible to mind tricks and bias as everyone else is.
It's a story as old as money itself.
A charismatic conman that pulled the wool over everyone's eyes, until he just couldn't keep juggling the balls anymore.
Steinheist is a three-part documentary available on Showmax, all about the recent Steinhoff scandal and in particular it focuses quite rightly on Steinhoff's ex-CEO, Markus Jooste, who orchestrated the whole thing.
The most interesting thing we took from the first part of the show, was just how good Jooste was at convincing people - BTW very smart financial people like Johan van Zyl and Christo Wiese - that everything Steinhoff was doing was perfectly legit.
The Steinhoff board was convinced, fancy analysts on TV were convinced; German police were raiding the Steinhoff offices in Frankfurt and no alarm bells went off for anyone.
Industry veterans at the time would publically say that Steinhoff's accounting practice was incredibly complicated and impossible to understand, but this didn't put them off from labelling it as a raging BUY.
The take away from all of this is that no matter how smart you might think these guys are, they are just as fallible to mind tricks and bias as everyone else is.
There are many. many similar examples that are presented as opportunities everyday.
Think for yourself and always try to disprove what you believe, rather than simply gathering more evidence to support what you already believe.
Part one of Steinheist is available in South Africa on Showmax now with part two airing on 29 September and part three on 6 October.
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Tevya Shapiro