When Are Lies Errors in Communication?

Lies and Their Consequences

I once attended a training program at my place of work that focused on providing good customer service. The thing is, my job really had nothing to do with external customer service, and only by a stretch of the imagination could it be said that my work as an individual contributor had much to do with internal customer service -- a phrase that is corporate-speak for carrying out work that is of value to another department or team member. Truth be told, I signed up for the training program just to get some relief from my oppressive work. The customer service training program was conducted by a pleasant man who happened to be gay, which is neither here nor there, really, except for one factor. From what I observed, I thought he might have be able to conduct this overly simple -- reductionist -- workshops because people avoided confronting him. As he told his captive audience on the first session of the first day of the training, the workshops had been his idea. He run up a trial balloon and received approval and funding for the workshop. Compared to my work, what he did all day seemed like a cakewalk. Since I was able to escape my workstation for two-hours every week for six weeks, I amicably participated in the workshops. Coincidently, our company was concurrently participating in the 500 Hundred Best Places to Work competition. The assessment was a 360-degree sort, covering all the major areas of corporate life. We were encouraged to be honest in our responses, and told that all of our responses would be held in strict confidence. I had just completed the workshop evaluations for the overall customer service training, and as I recall, I gave a fairly positive review and even included some specifics about how the workshop helped me in my job -- but the examples were made up. When I completed the 500 Hundred Best assessment, however -- for some reason that escapes me now -- I felt compelled to be completely honest in my comments. What I wrote, essentially, is that the workshop was a waste of money for people in our company's line of business, that it was overly simplistic, and that reading a fold-over three-color brochure would provide more valuable information than sitting through six weeks of hand-holding and play-acting. I don't to tis day know if the workshop instructor was involved in the review of the comments for the 500 Hundred Best, or if someone sympathetic to his efforts simply decided to share my comments with him. But I do know that he saw them. And I do know that he took my comments very, very personally. I know this because his demeanor toward me changed 180 degrees, and every time I saw him in our building, he gave me a childish dirty look. So now I know why no one ever broached the subject of his silly little workshop with him -- to avoid the pout and the drama. In avoiding confrontation of the workshop trainer, others in the company were simply perpetuating a problem or, as Beason (2001) might refer say, an "error, unfortunately can contribute to diverse problems as well as to problems associated with that error (p. 32). The workshop presenter wasn't the only one who felt betrayed. I had been lied to about the confidentiality of comments -- I had been led to believe that they would go directly to the jurors for the competition and not be reviewed internally, which more or less did away with any associated reliability. Underlying this debacle was the fact that I had lied to or at least misled others, too. In retrospect, I can see that in regarding my comments simply as feedback about good use of company resources or opportunity cost in the training realm, I missed an important aspect of the experience of the reader of my comments. As Beason (2001) argued, "Errors must be defined not just as textual features breaking handbook rules but as mental events taking place outside the immediate text" (p. 3). Kant's interpretation of my frank honesty in my 500 Hundred Best comments and my direct lying in my workshop evaluation is that in both situations, I was wrong. In the first instance, "lying corrupts the most important quality of my being human; my ability to make free, rational choices" (Mazur, 1993). In the second instance, my lies rob others of their freedom to choose rationally. When my lie leads people to decide other than they would had they known the truth, I have harmed their human dignity and autonomy" (Mazur, 1993).