FLORENCE, Italy (AP) — Is helping a pal win a contract just being friendly? What’s wrong with taking the kids to the beach in the office car? And why not linger over lunch at the trattoria if things aren’t too hectic at work? These are the kinds of questions that city bureaucrats pondered recently in Florence in what has been billed as Italy’s first anti-corruption class for public officials.

Italy, the birthplace of the Mafia, is notorious for its problems with corruption — and these days it’s awash with scandals that have tainted some of its most important public works projects. But the lessons in Florence took aim at more mundane problems: the little instances of everyday corruption that many Italians don’t even recognize as being wrong.