Truth without a cult of candour

Public morality offers a simple ideal: an honest person always tells the whole truth. That formula fails to distinguish lying, privacy, confidentiality, tact and protection from danger.

You have to remember who was told what, keep the versions consistent and hope that reality does not supply independent data. The truth is usually cheaper to maintain.

Lying to yourself is particularly dangerous. Somebody else’s deception is sometimes exposed by facts. Your own has direct access to the interpretation department.

At the same time the rule “never lie” collides with reality. There is confidentiality, there are surprises, diplomacy, protection from violence, and questions nobody has the right to demand an answer to.

It is more useful to distinguish:

• a false statement;
• a refusal to answer;
• keeping somebody else’s secret;
• a mistake;
• incomplete information;
• social politeness;
• deception for gain;
• deception for safety.

A refusal is often better than an invented version:

I don’t want to discuss this.

I can’t pass that information on.

I’m not ready to answer yet.

Small lies pay especially badly. For a minor convenience a person casts doubt on his entire system of messages. What stings people is not only the fact of the deception but the assumption that they will not notice it.

If the deception did happen, boasting about it is out — not for reasons of technique, but because it reveals an attitude to trust. Successful deception is often possible not through outstanding intelligence but because the other side did not expect an attack from inside the relationship. Trust is an advantage that is easily mistaken for your own cunning.

Small lies are dangerous not because they get caught but because they accumulate in the background. An employee who is late and blames the traffic, is ill on Mondays and explains unfinished work by somebody else’s delay is rarely exposed in any specific episode. It is just that one day the manager starts double-checking his deadlines by default — and does it silently, because there is nothing to confront him with. The person’s position changes without a single conversation.

The reverse is equally true and equally invisible. Someone who reports a missed deadline in advance and without decoration gradually earns the right to be believed without checking. It is the cheapest thing available to acquire and the hardest to restore.