Why sometimes, good people are found lying?

I believe telling the truth is always good no matter what is the situation but we must consider the reason or cause behind the lie, if a mother telling lie to give children higher share, a leader telling lie to keep motivated his staff and so on, the cause behind in all these situations is good so if cause behind lie is positive it’s great and if cause is negative than it’s bad. So always think cause and reason behind the lie....

Posted: Nov 16, 2018 10:19 AM

It is easy to make yes/no decisions if there is only one right value at stake, like in this case honesty. Much more we encounter situations where we have several values competing with each other, like respect, responsibility, fairness, compassion and community.

In these cases we need to make ethical decisions, e.g. should I be honest and by the same time showing no respect or compassion (if we tell the truth but hurt the other's feelings).
Or should I be honest or be responsible for our family to bring home money (on a bazaar, lying e.g. about the price is an accepted behavior, since we need to close many deals with good profit).

That is why each ethical decision has to be looked at from the situation and the values involved. The decisions about right/wrong are easy to judge, but the decisions about right/right are the difficult ones. We can easily forgive someone lying if he or she saved 100 lives by that, the values of responsibility, compassion and community far outweight the violation of honesty.

Posted: Nov 16, 2018 11:55 AM

Very interesting. Thank you

Posted: Nov 29, 2018 10:26 AM

My question is what do you do or say when you are on the receiving end of a lie?
The sad reality is that many people do lie. In fact, depending on how we define it, most of us do, at some time or another, in some form or other.
Another reality is some good people will tell lies unintentionally and totally unaware that they did.
When someone speaks about something that they believe is true and you know it is not, Does that make them a liar?
Great question Mohamed and everyone has made a lot of good points here which has broadened my perspective, so thank you.

Posted: Dec 9, 2018 3:05 PM

John Watson, You bring up an interesting question... if someone lies unintentially.... and they were unaware, and they believe it to true... have they lied? The information is still false, but did they really lie? Got me thinking....

Posted: Dec 9, 2018 3:27 PM

I think people lie to save a "hurt" to a project or a person. I do believe that, in general, their intent is good and that they are sensitive to other's feelings.

I agree with the group that while, a "White Lie" may put a Band-Aid to the problem, its only temporary fix and that having a full disclosure should be the ultimate goal.

Posted: Jan 6, 2019 12:15 AM

Hi Mohamed!vokin
Thanks for the very thought-provoking blog post. I see that there are already a number of excellent responses.
I agree that all these are unethicall: Telling a white lie, a half-truth or even not disclosing information when it is required.
However, the matter is not exactly binary, black, or white. There indeed exist several shades of grey in-between.
In my mother tongue of Tamil, there's a famous saying that one could be excused for saying a thousand lies to get one important good deed done.
The saying brings out the fact that, while saying the truth is very important, the degree of unethicality of a lie depends on the objective in its speakers mind: To achieve a selfish objective, or in the interest of greater good.
I hope you will continue posting to enrich our PM community.
Meanwhile, keep smiling, keep shining, and keep leading!

Posted: Jan 16, 2019 3:47 PM

Hi Mohamed!
Thanks for the very thought-provoking blog post. I see that there are already a number of excellent responses.
I agree that all these are unethicall: Telling a white lie, a half-truth or even not disclosing information when it is required.
However, the matter is not exactly binary, black, or white. There indeed exist several shades of grey in-between.
In my mother tongue of Tamil, there's a famous saying that one could be excused for saying a thousand lies to get one important good deed done.
The saying brings out the fact that, while saying the truth is very important, the degree of unethicality of a lie depends on the objective in its speakers mind: To achieve a selfish objective, or in the interest of greater good.
I hope you will continue posting to enrich our PM community.
Meanwhile, keep smiling, keep shining, and keep leading!

Posted: Jan 16, 2019 3:47 PM

Great points, John Watson.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to your thought-provoking questions, nor is "truth serum" so easy to obtain or administer! :-)

Posted: Jan 16, 2019 3:50 PM

Yes Moh. Lying or let me put it as" covering up" sometimes occur in a fascinating manner that we have forgotten we are giving out half truth. It hurts when exposed but maybe it was meant to save a life!

Posted: Jan 18, 2019 5:50 PM

Is lying your best protection of yourself or others, or is deriving more substantial evidence in seeking the truth more likely to set the situation in a different context to be seen as it truly is?

Posted: Jan 19, 2019 12:59 PM

Oneday we were trying to derive the right formulation of metric costing for an inhouse production of an ingredient to our product (internal project for cost reduction) when the purchasing manager presented us with a 'padded' raw cost that we were trying to resolve. There are times when people are not kind and respectful of another's attempts to do something new. He was trying to add in the labor and overhead, and make it comparable. I said: well, that's not the purchase cost now. And it felt more like an angry bird meeting. People don't want to contribute when their efforts are met with undue compunction. I said: well, given that we have ALL made mistakes (and I knew some dillies) I think we can let this pass and let the cost analyst do her job. You can't always cover for people, but maybe it's the wrong thing to do. It's a just a reminder that we all sit there rather baffled at times, and when we're kind other people will remember that. You know , the REAL PEOPLE, the ones that care.

Posted: Jan 19, 2019 1:15 PM

Thanks for bringing up this topic Mohamed, tough one!

In France we have a saying: "la verite sort de la bouche des enfants" ("the truth come out of the children's mouths!"). unfiltered!
Yes, kids very often tell the facts as they are, and they are normally excused, because they don't even know that what they are saying can cause big trouble for some people (even an undeserved death): is that really good or is it bad? Of course we can not blame the child, because he/she just does not know. But the same does not apply to a person aware of the consequences of mentioning/saying a fact/Truth.

Personally, I think honesty should not imply disregard for other people's safety, property or privacy, etc... Assume you know about one of your company's trade secrets, and a friend asks you two questions?
Question 1: Do you know a trade secrets from your company?
- What is the true answer? what is the honest answer? Which is ethical?
Question 2: What is this trade secret?
- What is the true answer? what is the honest answer? Which is ethical?

Of course there are various ways to answer those questions, but my point is that as you go from question 1 to question 2, telling the factual truth requires that one takes other aspects and values into consideration and apply some filters to provide an answer.

As mentioned in other earlier comments, the truth we tell, the story we decide to communicate is influenced and filtered by our values and level of awareness of the situation.

If a person you consider good (and then probably respect) says something that you know is "a lie", you have to take a quick decision:
If you are absolutely convinced that one should always tell the truth in all circumstances, then "speak out" here in there, expose the lie of this "good person" and from there, watch what happens, and accept all consequences!
Or maybe you accept that there may be justifying circumstances for that good person to tell this "lie" and address the situation in a more circumspect way...

Personally, I don't like lies and I think most of the times, they are used intentionally for hiding shady activities or purposes, but I am sure there can be circumstances where they may be necessary.

Again, thanks for bringing up this topic.

Posted: Jan 29, 2019 11:20 AM

There's definitely different types of lies. The harmless white lie (the mother in your example), which has no consequence or negative impact on others to lies told in the workplace which can damage your reputation, your company and respect from your colleagues.

Posted: Dec 7, 2019 12:27 PM