Telling the Truth

Reading the honesty thread on UK Business Forums reminded me of my own experience. I recently moved house. For the first time in many years, I chose to shift the furniture myself. More accurately, I hired a van and got my son and his mate to help. The move went smoothly with one exception – when we slammed the van door shut, part of the wing mirror fell off.

Then we had a debate about what to do. I won’t name the guilty party, but someone thought that we shouldn’t say that the door had been slammed. In fact, the general idea seemed to be to get out of the blame whatever it took. Hang the truth!

We eventually chose a different way. We made a straightforward statement of what had happened, warts and all. I’ve just got off the phone from the hire company, and the lady running things has told me that she won’t be charging for the damage, as we were obviously telling the truth.

Unfortunately, a lot of people are “economical with the truth”. But lying is still seen as a touchstone in relationships. No one likes being lied to, and in business, if we lie we eventually get caught. When this happens, that essential business asset, trust, disappears forever. Lying is corrosive in both business and personal relationships.

And you know what? Telling the truth is the right thing to do. So here’s the challenge. Why not tell the truth, even when it’s to our disadvantage? If we do, we’ll not only do well, we’ll also live in a nicer, more trusting world.