Brainstorm dishonesty. Jot down your own personal experiences with it and discuss the topic with others to get their insight also. Perform cursory research on dishonesty and then narrow your focus. For example, concentrate only on the effects of dishonesty in academic settings or on a specific kind of dishonesty, such as plagiarism, business ethics infractions or "white lies." You could further limit your scope to either short-term or long-term effects or impact.
Validate dishonesty's presumed effects. Search the internet and libraries for published studies on dishonesty from credible sources. Evidence from reputable academic, mental health, law enforcement and similar sources will establish your own credibility, eliminate bias and confirm causal relationships. Research will also help you distinguish between dishonesty's primary or secondary effects as well as short-term or long-term effects in any setting.
Create your thesis statement. Identify your topic and several sub-topics upon which you will illustrate or expound the effects of dishonesty. For example, "home, school and work" or "academic essay-writing, exam-taking and stealing."
Write an introduction that gets your reader's attention and leads naturally into your thesis statement. For example, "Pinocchio's lie-detector nose was the least of his worries. With every deceitful tale, Pinocchio endangered his life and the lives of his grandfather, friends and villagers. Such is the nature of dishonesty; it is destructive. The act of lying can damage or destroy relationships in three ways: personally, inter-personally and socially."
Develop your sub-topics within the body of your essay, devoting one to two paragraphs to each subtopic. Arrange your subtopics from most to least important, or chronologically. Begin each paragraph with the topic sentence that you will support with facts or examples. For example, "Self-deception, or lying to oneself, leads to (a), (b) and (c)."
Write in the third person to project authoritativeness. Also use transitional expressions to move smoothly from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph. Words and phrases such as "consequently," "because," "for this reason," "therefore" and "as a result," are especially usefully in describing effects.
Conclude with a summary of your subtopics and a restatement of your thesis. Then point to the significance of your findings in your readers' lives. For example, "Pinocchio was lucky; his story had a happy ending. But life is not a fairy tale. Lying carries great risk and should be avoided."