I wouldn’t want to play poker with you: by showing me your hand each time, you would take all the fun out of the game. I have borrowed this analogy from another classic work on honesty, in this case, on honesty in business, a 1968 HBR article by Albert Carr, “Is Business Bluffing Ethical?” Carr concludes that in many cases it is.

Clients often bluff with us, telling us that our proposed price is the highest, while telling our competitor that our firm will get the work done faster, trying to get something from each of us by sharing some information with us and withholding some. Very few people think of this as unethical, anymore than they see bluffing in a game of poker to be dishonest. It is considered fair play, particularly on issues surrounding fee negotiation.

Sisela Bok makes it clear that everybody lies on occasion. Her book is devoted to determining when it is acceptable. Charlie, I think most people would think no worse of you if you responded to your aging aunt’s quary about how she looked in her new hat with less than full candor. Nor would many people feel it wrong if you told a prospective client, “I am going to be in Los Angeles, anyway, so stopping by will be no problem,” when, in fact, you are making a special trip to see him. You tell him the lie to relieve him of any obligation that he might feel, if he knew you were incurring the cost of the trip for him alone. No one is likely to recieve a perjury conviction for either of these lies.

In a game of poker, if you hold yourself to a higher standard of honesty than the other players, you will lose all of your money. The real question, I think, is when are business conversations like a game of poker, where bluffing is fair play, and when are they not and so require full professional honesty? Concievabley, the answer might differ from client to client.

I have searched many long, dark nights, my lattern held high showing me the path, looking for an honest man, one who has never told a lie. Charlie, have I finally found him?

I’m with Sisela Bok on this; “successful deception,” as your first assumption puts it, is as much lying as lying on your resume. If one were to ask the client whether you lied in such a case, they would almost certainly answer “yes,” and would be offended that we would try to split hairs about whether we told an overt rather than a “finessed” lie. It’s all the same to the one lied to.

This sort of lie (I’m thinking particularly of your “it’s my first year” lie) is also the source of a lot of coerceive corrosion of ethics. I remember vividly exactly that situation early on in my own career. I was to meet with an Associate from our London office in front of a client office in Manhattan before going in to meet the client. The manager in charge said, “no need to let them know you just met.”

Of course, with the unerring precision the conspiratorial universe sometimes exhibits, that topic came up precisely, and I remember the squirming I did as I tried to find the wiggle room between my boss and the client. Fortunately, I made the right call–I told the whole truth to the client and took my manager’s wrath on the chin later. Years later, I have figured out, my boss was a jerk. Or an asshole. Or, more precisely, wrong on this instance.

In the law, it’s called suborning perjury. In management, it’s no better. Asking subordinates to lie is worse than lying oneself, and the test of lying is whether the client feels lied to.

At least, that’s how I see it.