Getting to the Truth of the Matter: Honesty and Lying in Organizations

My brother-in-law, Rich, raised an interesting question the other day (isn’t that what brothers-in-law are for?).  I was explaining to a newly graduated sociology major how I used my academic training in that field to help organizations improve their performance.  Describing the deep interview techniques I employ to get to a version of organizational “reality” Rich asked, “how do you know the people you interview aren’t lying?”

Good question, but there’s an even better one … how do I know when people are telling the truth?

Not that I believe every one lies, at least not intentionally; rather I think most folks tell you what they think is true.  Occasionally I’ll run across someone who concocts a story with the intent of deceiving someone (me, others, themselves) about the truth, but those persons are rare.  And as any good detective knows, liars give themselves and their “tells” are easy to spot.

Remember lying in an organization is not like bluffing in a card game.  The bluff may win the poker pot;  lying to colleagues and friends has messy consequences, the least of which is the loss of trust.

For me the issue is not about catching liars, it’s about getting to the truth of the matter. 

For now, I’ll skip over the complexities of what truth and, ultimately, reality may be.  Epistemological considerations aside, I operate on the assumption that there is some inherent truth to be found in any social situation.  And it is part of my diagnostic process to step in as an outsider and determine what that truth is.

The function of my interviews is to gather up those various personal versions of the truth.  In my collection I usually come across a lie or two, an occasional delusion, lots of guesses, some myth and, every so often, a nugget of data.  From these various “accounts” I construct a landscape and search for themes and clusters to make sense of what’s going on in the organization.

A mosaic emerges and I look for a coherent pattern that explains events.  This is similar to the practice of triangulation in navigation, where the intersection of multiple bearings locates a ship on a chart.  I position each of the accounts in relation to all the others… the intersection or overlap of accounts often highlights what the real issues are, my hypothesis about the truth.

Many times I’ll re-interview some of my informants, but this time I’ll present my analysis to get their reaction.   Sometimes I’m dead wrong and the reasons always point to a new truth.  Sometimes I’m close and an interviewee will use my theory and discover a missing piece that adds to the mosaic.  Oftentimes, I’ll reach what a mentor of mine, Malcolm Parlett, called a “recognizable reality,” where my account of the truth brings words to something the participants have been feeling but could not express.

My approach is hardly original.  It’s an amalgamation of a bunch of things, including a technique I learned from the famed criminologist Don Cressey.  To write a seminal work on embezzlers, Other People’s Money, he devised a nifty way of constructing case studies, called analytic induction. There are some elements here of  Rogerian non-directive therapy, Edgar Schein’s process consultation, techniques borrowed from market research focused group interviewing, belle hooks’ concept of center-boundary analysis and a little bit of common sense borne of  being the adult child of an alcoholic parent (thanks, Dad). 

To answer Rich’s original question, liars are usually exposed through this technique of deep interrogation, because their accounts are so contrary (and obviously self-serving) that they stand out from the rest.  On first hearing I have to treat each of the different accounts as realistic, but as versions accumulate those at variance with the rest fall into one of two categories: distinct analysis from a much different perspective (thus requiring it be fit into the scheme of all the stories) or a misconception.  Some misconceptions are true to the teller, usually the result of a set of presuppositions held by the observer.  Some are lies.

In probing an account it’s always possible to ferret out the motives behind the story and liars give themselves away by always eventually tipping off the resentment or jealousy that fuels the deception.  You have to watch for it, but liars do things that honest people don’t.  Here’s what to watch for:  liars always make themselves look good in the story and they always try to construct an account that is “air-tight;” there are no loose ends that if investigated would unveil the deception.  Liars always try to “sell” their story and the more sincere they become, the less sincere they sound.

I’m reminded of the old joke about the neighbor defending himself after returning a lawn-mower to you broken:  “I didn’t break it, it was never broken, I never borrowed it!”

There’s one more lesson to be drawn from this inquiry.  In my experience most people don’t lie.  I’m not saying they never lie, but when it comes to organizational problems people really try to seek explanations they believe to be true.   Unlike a poker hand, organizational problems are just that: problems.  Whatever has gone wrong, most people are genuinely concerned to get things right.  Their search for answers is genuine and most of the accounts I hear are authentic efforts to get to the truth.

Certainly people try to protect themselves by providing accounts that make them look good.  But accusing others by shifting the blame from yourself or your team to others is a risky venture.  You may deflect responsibility from yourself momentarily (listen to Bill Cosby on spilled milk to see where this tactic goes), but ultimately truth will out and your face is spattered with two eggs:  the original mistake you tried to cover up and the lie you told.

I’ve discovered that most of what people consider lies are really the result of ignorance or insensitivity on the part of the accused deceiver.  People usually say things inspired by the truth as they know it.  The boss who says he’ll get you a promotion is not lying when it fails to come through… at the time he made the promise he thought he could do it;  turns out he didn’t have the right information or enough power to make it happen.  The disconnect between what he promised and what happened looks like a lie; is really an example of over-promising out of ignorance.  The person who tells you that they don’t like your tie is not lying… they are just insensitive, mistaking their personal judgment for a collective fashion truth.

Unfortunately appearing to tell a lie, whether excused by insensitivity or ignorance, has the same impact as intentionally deceiving someone for your benefit.  Any lie, even a well-intentioned one (no, I like your tie) corrodes the elemental fabric of all social life, trust.  In any organization, managers especially, need take care that nothing they say is dishonest (or give the appearance of dishonesty) because such statements chip away at the trust that holds any social group together.

As long as we’re on the topic, I’ve had the unique opportunity to work behind the scenes of many different types of organizations - governmental, business, public sector.  In my experience, it saddens me to report that where I’m most likely to hear a lie is in educational institutions.  College presidents and school district administrators are the worst… to the point I wonder if it’s part of their job-training.

For more on the meaning and consequences of dishonesty, Sissela Bok’s academic treatise, Lying, is highly worthy of inspection. She’ll leave you feeling uneasy about “white-lies” or even deceptions used to protect others.

Beyond the issue of veracity, Rich’s question points to a broader range of issues concerning truth in organizations.  What I’ve discovered in analyzing hundreds of organizational problems is that the reality described to be to me is often flat wrong.  There’s no deception involved, people just misread social situations altogether. 

The error in their accounts is almost always a fallacy, what scientists call reductionism… in this instance, reducing complex social phenomena down to individual personalities.  Fallacy or not, most managers explain and act upon organizational problems as if the cause of the issue is located in individuals (or groups).  They commit the fallacy of reducing the analysis to the personality attributes of one or more parties.

The most common explanations I hear for breakdowns in organizational performance are:

·         A personality conflict.

·         A communications breakdown between individuals.

·         Someone lied.

While there is some truth to each of these explanations (obviously people carry out actions) the truth of the matter is that breakdowns in organizational settings are more likely rooted in the setting itself, not the people.  The two most over-looked explanations of why things go wrong are organizational structure/systems and organizational culture.  

The way in which organizations structure how decisions are made, implemented and communicated and the cultural values that guide how those decisions are made, communicated and interpreted is many times a better explanation of what has gone wrong than the deficiencies of any one person or a group.

Of course, individuals and the personality traits of people surely color the way in which these problems are expressed, but the “spin they put on the ball” should not distract from the fact that the ball was already in flight.  Good analysis looks beyond the individual and seeks the source of the problem deeper in the organization itself.

Here’s an example.  Sally and George are having difficulties over the company’s sick leave policy.  Sally is a division manager; George is a human relations specialist and he routinely holds up and sometimes denies her trequests.  Their public discussions and private communication have become increasingly acrimonious, to the point that George’s supervisor, Shelley, has complained to the COO Jeannette, that something has to get done.

In this example, this is where I get called in.  The COO tells me there is a “personality conflict” between two of her key managers and I’m asked to fix it.  Sure enough, I interview everyone and the accounts are pretty much the same.  Sally lists all of George’s undesirable traits and writes him off as “impossible to work with.”  I hear the same story about Sally from George and he tells me “I can’t work with her anymore.”


There's plenty of data to point to a personality conflict, but the problem is really with the roles.  Put too close friends in the same situation and the organizational structure will bring them into conflict.

Now is the time to look beyond the personal aspects of the conflict.  The personalities are relevant, but not central to the explanation of what’s gone wrong here. I interpret their conflict to be a symptom of something wrong in the organization itself, either a systematic problem or a conflict in cultural values.   

In this example, my inquiries revealed that the real problem with Sally and George had to do with the roles they were assigned.  Sally really objected to having to get her employee sick leave requests and other decisions approved by George who was neither her superior nor in her reporting line.  In carrying out the responsibilities of his  role, George was perceived (correctly) by Sally as a road-block and a time-sink that got in the way of her trying to carry out the responsibilities of her role (which made led George to see Sally [correctly] as pushy, impatient and disrespectful).  And, of course, the more Sally objected to George’s “interference,” the more he felt disrespected by Sally and the more difficult it became for her to get assistance from him.

That’s just an example, but I hear them every day. If it isn’t a dispute about roles and responsibilities it’s a conflict over contrary values bred within the same organization.  I could have taken the same example and shown how it exemplified the values of productivity and efficiency held by the operational manager, Sally, and the values of policy and law held by an HR staffer, George.  I’ll use another blog post at a later date to describe the conflict inherent in any social enterprise as operational, managerial and technical values collide (it ain’t pretty). 

Ok, so what is the truth?  I believe it’s there, but you have to work to figure it out.  Whether you hold to the Rashomon or elephant and blind men metaphors, the conclusion is the same.  Everyone’s position in an organization allows for a unique, but distorted view of the truth.  To solve organizational problems you need to learn how to combine these various accounts and come to a sense of what may be true.  In fact, understanding the source and nature of the distortions may explain much about why people think and act as they do.