"You're advising people to lie!" is a comment that comes up on a regular basis here at Advice Line. It came up a couple of times recently - regarding the manager who had helped an employee improve his performance but then was instructed to fire the guy anyway ("When your boss tells you to terminate an employee," 10/14/2007) and to the job seeker who wanted to stall a prospective employer who wanted him to begin “You’re advising people to lie!” is a comment that comes up on a regular basis here at Advice Line. It came up a couple of times recently – regarding the manager who had helped an employee improve his performance but then was instructed to fire the guy anyway (“When your boss tells you to terminate an employee,” 10/14/2007) and to the job seeker who wanted to stall a prospective employer who wanted him to begin immediately because he was hoping for a better offer from a more desirable employer (“An excellent pickle,” 10/17/2007).Because it’s immoral, or bad business, or makes readers uncomfortable, the attitude that nobody should ever lie seems to be alive and well.To which I say: Don’t be stupid. Actually, I don’t say that. Were I the sort to be completely honest under every and all circumstances I might be tempted. That’s my honest and truthful immediate reaction, until I take a moment to think. Then I reach a different conclusion and instead say: That reaction is the result of incomplete thinking.”So my first objection to “always tell the truth” is, which truth. The truth I want to immediately blurt out before I stop to think? Or the truth that only comes with reflection?The term “lie” seems to come easily. Lying seems to me to have these boundaries: The falsehood has to be deliberate, it has to have the intent to deceive, and it has to have a malicious purpose. Many of my correspondents seem to think that the intent to deceive is enough. So here’s a situation: Your nine-year-old daughter has taken up the violin. Excited, she comes home to play for you. When she’s finished, you:Applaud, and tell her what a wonderful job she did.Tell her, patiently, that she needs more practice but that you’re confident that someday she’ll be worth listening to.Tell her she sounded awful.If you chose any of the truthful alternatives, I have to be honest: You are, or would be, a horrible parent and in a just world would be legally forbidden to ever have children.That’s the “honest” phrasing. What I would actually say if I wanted to be persuasive instead of “truthful” is this: If you chose any but the first option, you might want to re-think your approach to what honesty truly entails and requires. Honesty is just one of a number of “goods.” It isn’t really even a “good” in and of itself. Honesty is a good idea because everything is easier for most of us when those around us take what we say at face value.The importance of honesty competes with other goods. Allowing others to save face is one of them: Where I live, humiliating another human being for the sole reason that I need to be honest is cheesiness, not integrity.In the world of business, in any negotiating situation, lying is still frowned upon (especially since later on it can lead to claims of breach of contract). Some level of deception is, on the other hand, part of the game, practiced by both sides. I am, of course, including the withholding of information as a form of deception. When you’re negotiating, full disclosure is not required. Sure, it would be wonderful if Oracle, Microsoft and IBM published their current internal bug list for everyone to see while evaluating their DBMSs. It isn’t going to happen. Yes, you can claim that job applicants should, on their resumes, list every failure and bad decision they ever made along with their accomplishments.You can claim it. You can go ahead and do it on your resume. That doesn’t make it good business.In a leadership role, you could tell those who report to you your exact level of agreement or disagreement with each and every decision the company makes. You could … but you’d be a dreadful business leader. Often, if you express yourself the way many of my “never lie” correspondents do, you’d be lying, too. Because you’d say, “The company made the wrong decision.” That statement almost certainly would be untrue. The true statement would be, “I disagree with the company’s decision.”Which means that as a business leader you think it’s important to reveal your disagreement to those who work for you instead of maximizing the chance that the company succeeds in the course of action it has chosen.That doesn’t make you a leader, or a more moral human being. In my book, it makes you self-indulgent.– BobPowered by ScribeFire. Technology Industry