Three cases where people might not have a right to the truth (part five of a series)

You can read previous posts in this series here: an introduction to truthtelling, truthtelling in the Bible, why truthtelling is important, and guidelines for telling the truth at work.

There can be cases where people have no right to the truth at work.  Here’s a famous example people often use:

Another category of possible exceptions to the norm of truthtelling is when the person asking the questions has no right to the truth. For example, if a gun-wielding criminal comes into a convenience store for the purpose of robbing it, the employees are under no obligation to tell the truth about where the money is. Most people would accept that lying to the robber is justifiable. In fact, in some cases, explaining to the person that he has no right to the truth would be tantamount to giving him the information he is seeking. In those cases, it may be acceptable to deceive the person to the minimum degree necessary to prevent him from learning what he has no right to know.

There are three cases where deception may be part of the workplace environment. But as we said in our last post, take care that you don’t apply the categories further than you need to.

1) Using deception may be excusable to gain information you have a right to know.

For example, imagine your job is to serve court orders to people who wish to avoid appearing in court. If you start by disclosing who you are and why you are attempting to contact them, they will probably never admit who they are. Yet your job is vital to the function of the system of laws.

You can read more examples, and ponder some difficult ethical cases that may come up in your own work life, by looking at the whole article.

 2) Don’t try to find out information you have no right to know, even if you come upon it in a perfectly honest way.

For example, you are a sales representative staying overnight in a hotel in your prospect’s city. You discover that a sales representative of a competitor stayed in the same hotel room the night before and left a copy of the competitor’s bid in the drawer. All you have to do is leaf through the bid and you will learn the competitor’s prices, terms, and recommended products. From this you will gain a decisive competitive advantage. You have no right to the information, and in fact (in most cases) the bid will be clearly marked “confidential.” Yet you have not deceived anyone to obtain the information. Should you consider it a lucky break, or the due consequences of the competitor’s blunder in leaving a bid in a hotel room?

3) You may need to use deception to conceal things others have no right to know.

These discussions about the legitimacy of some deception when another party has no right to know may seem like a litany of excuses for questionable conduct. On a personal level, this may often be the case. But on a societal level, if there is no mechanism to protect people and organizations from having to reveal things others have no right to know, society may be harmed.

If you want to know more, click on through to read more about how this actually happened in a pharmaceutical company’s case.

We’ll wrap up this series soon with some conclusions about what it means to be people of truth in the workplace. Stay tuned!

Some key Biblical texts on truth and deception are here.

Image: kxlly, Flickr.