I think your definition of lying is not correct. Legally, to prove Perjury, one does not have to prove that the accused had malicious intent; only that he/she intentionally deceived.

You just endorsed "lying for someone else's good." It's still lying, and I still see it as wrong. Your argument that good results justify the lie has flaws, including trusting one's own judgement over the person lied to. Unless that person is actually nine years old, that's arrogant at best.

Don't be a damned fool.

That's what my father always said, and it applies here (esp. to the replies to your blog)

-S

In the late 90s the CEO of the company I worked for issued a company-wide voicemail to quash rumors that the company was being sold. Four weeks later the company was sold. At a management meeting to discuss the sale, one person told the CEO that the only good thing she could see was that least the lying would stop. The intended effect of retaining employees and maintaining productiving was negated as employees who had been lied to abandoned the company as fast as they could print out their resumes. Whether or not the intention was malicious was, all in all, irrelevant.

This reminds of a conversation that I frequently have with my wife - someone has asked her to do something she doesn't want to do and asks me for advice on how to refuse. She wrangles with the possible half-truths, white-lies, vague excuses, and other shades of the truth. I always tell her the best version of what she wants and then follow up with something like "You know, of course, you don't have to tell them anything but no. Why is not their business."

She listens and thanks me and always ignores the last statement.

Saying nothing is often the best option, especially if the truth suffers by opening your mouth.

Now ask me if I always follow my own advice. ;-)

It's possible to be both truthful and canny. As Bob mentions, it's often what is NOT said that draws the line between lies and truth.

Telling your nine-year-old daughter she plays wonderfully when she is truly awful is a fine example. You can't say truthfully she was wonderful, but you can say that you're proud of her performance and can see that she's working hard. As a parent of two girls (now all grown up), I can attest that in the long run your kids will benefit from the knowledge that you will tell them the straight story, but without any intent to harm. I'd find what I could honestly praise and, if pressed, would confer with them about what they liked and disliked about their performance and what they thought they should work on. I'd then back them up on that.

Hmmm... come to think about it, that's how I ran my development teams as well.

Bottom line - don't ever get fooled into thinking that your choices are limited (like the 3 options Bob offers on the violin performance). There are always ways to frame the discussion that are both honest and rewarding for everyone.

Making a judgment call (like applauding or saying "good job") is not deception. "Good" for a beginning violin player is much different than "good" for members of a professional orchestra. Therefore deception is still the main indicator of a lie.

To say that we must sometimes deceive to save someone's face is a poor argument. There are effective ways to politely tell the truth - which sometimes include the (should be) obvious option of simply saying nothing. You may say that silence can be divisive, but hey, disagreement is part of life. The touchy-feely, love-everybody, don't-hurt-anyone's-feelings worldview just won't work for leaders.

Intending to deceive in negotiations, then, is still wrong, no matter how much other "good" is done. Being honest in negotiations may not get you the best deal, but it will aid you in future negotiations (as you won't have to cover your past "deceptions") and let you sleep at night.

An absolute prohibition on lying is silly. For example, my wife has given up asking if a new clothing purchase makes her look fat; she knows the only answer she'll ever get is, "No." But I still think Bob has it wrong. He says there has to be a malicious purpose, but I think you should examine the effect here rather than the purpose. If you lie to your nine year old, she'll be encouraged to continue practicing and playing. When you lie to your staff, especially about something as transparent as why you fired a poor performer, you erode trust and send a message that you think your staff is too stupid to know why a guy who sucked at his job was fired. You also degrade communication in your office. I've worked in this kind of situation, and what happens is the manager says A, and the employees sit around trying to figure out what part of A is a lie and what the manager is really up to. Treat your staff like intelligent adults, not a group of nine year olds.

BTW, for those who are enamored of absolute honesty, remember two things. First, if the only effect of telling someone the truth is to hurt them or another person, keep it to yourself. Second, half truths are often more effective tools of deception than lies.

I agree that complete honesty all the time smacks of self-indulgence. It gives you the excuse to ignore the person you are supposedly communicating with in order to spew whatever you _feel_ is truthful.

What is the purpose of the communication? What is the purpose of the total interaction that particular communication is occurring within?

And the folks who think the legal system is "correct" in how it views perjury are incorrect themselves. White lies are not prosecuted so they have no history (except for the history and convention of not being prosecuted). Bob is exactly correct that if you were totally honest with your children (or with your wife), you would not make a good parent (or husband). And honestly, I believe spewing what some folks call honesty would be viewed by enough other people as child abuse which would be prosecuted.

My father-inlaw used to say -

"There's honest and there's damn fool honest"

There's always the gottcha when the wife asks -

"Honey, do I look fat in this outfit?"

I like your definition of lie in this context. As another poster pointed out, it doesn't fit the legal definition, but it is a good practical one. I would say that what your three criteria add up to is a "harmful lie." Lies that do not meet the maliciousness criterion and are therefore harmless, would be more like white lies.

As a 15-year-old with average guitar playing skills and a below-average voice, I had dreamed of stardom. The praise of my drummer, who assured me that I had a great voice, buoyed my dream until my Dad stepped in.

One day Dad asked me as gently as he could if I knew I couldn't sing. Sure, I replied, hiding my hurt and surprise. He quickly explained that he didn't want to hurt me, but he didn't want me to have false hopes.

I then listened to myself on a tape recorder and discovered Dad told the truth and my friend lied. When confronted with his lie, my friend burst out laughing and said, "I know, I know, you're terrible!!!"

I'll take honesty any day. And my Dad wasn't a bad dad for it. Most of the comments I've read here are right on track. Lying to be nice is still lying. I have often give engaged couples Jeff's advice to find things that are praiseworthy and praise each other for them. False praise is just flattery. It's arrogant, demeaning and often counter-productive. And as often as not, it's probably more for the sake of the liar than for the one being lied to.

But hey, if I get hauled into court and asked under oath if I..., I'll just tell a "not-a-lie" and say "I did not have sex with that woman" because I'm deceiving the judge and jury out of self-preservation, not maliciousness. Therefore I can point to this column and demonstrate that my deception was not a lie. (And no, this paragraph is not a lie; it's more like hyperbole.)

This is really more of a philisophical issue than a business one, although it obviously has implications everywhere. Even the Dalai Lama would agree that there are times when lying is the right thing to do, however only in cases when the good greatly outweighs the bad. There is always bad in lying, and some of the posters have given great examples of that. At the very least, I think any lie is disrespectful, and if discovered leads to mistrust and a loss of credibility in the liar.

My own example for the mix. We have a senior developer manager who has been around for years. This person has gradually fallen behind in technical skills, and was never good at project management or meeting user needs, but was the right person at a critical time and so found themselves where they are.

Her bosses are unwilling to point this out to her, for fear of upsetting her, and so treat her like nothing is wrong and continue to allow her to both run projects and manage her dev team. The turnover, both on her team and with her peers, has been tremendous, and exacerbated by management, who perversely has harshly criticized those who try to bring up this issue. Morale is obviously pretty bad.

This is obviously bad management, but in some way they can be forgiven for not connecting the dots between their lying to encourage her, which they feel is a good thing they're doing, and the negative effects that's having throughout. Without the lies, this very smart but not very insightful manager would likely try to improve herself, or gradually realize that it may be time for retirement, and both her and we would be happier for it.

There was a lady who failed to go on to the next step of American Idol. She told the judges, "Everyone has told her that she has an amazing voice." I could not disagree with that statement. "Amazing" was an apt description of her voice. However, it was a voice that I would not rather hear.

No one lied to her. No one told her the truth either.

So many great stories of truth conquering all. Sorry, but being somewhat cynical, I have to ask Marty - how can you be sure there weren't other times in your life when your dad decided it was better to tell you a white lie about something rather than the truth? And for Mike - Why is no one telling the 'truth' about this poor performing development manager to these apparently clueless managers?

Unfortunately we're never going to come up with a nice neat list of of what the truth is in many situations. The truth looks different depending on your own experiences. If asked, Mike's managers may describe his situation quite differently, for example. It's too bad because that's probably why we have too many lawyers in this country.

As a number of people have pointed out, honesty doesn't not have to be synonymous (or coupled) with harshness. And lying is not the only alternative to clobbering someone upside the head with the naked truth.

The truth can be packaged neatly, and delivered in a palatable fashion to avoid these problems, but in some situations this requires much more work than in others. Lying, in all of its forms, almost always involves less work (at least initially), which is why it is more easily selected.

Long-term, however, lying involves more work.

In short, the problem with the lying vs truth discussion is often that the implication of truth is that it must hurt to be effective -- bit it doesn't.

A LIE in the name of goodness is better then the TRUTH in the name of evil.

I can't see anyone disagreeing with this statement. A woman standing on the railing of a bridge is approached by a police officer, she tells him the saddest story of losing her husband, her children and the family business to bankruptcy. The police officer's first words are "Come off of that railing , everything is going to be fine." The police officer knows full well that the woman's life may never be "fine" and that it definitely will never be perfect after suffering from such a huge traumatic loss. So, if the woman's life deteriorates after the encounter on the bridge, therefore classifying the police officers words as lies, would that be seen as wrong. If his LIES gave a human being the chance to live their life, is he wrong for doing so? Should he have told the truth and told the woman her life will only get worse from that point if she steps off the bridge, because though he doesn't know this now, at the time he wouldn't have known things were going to get better either. So, is it really true that the truth is better then a lie? because I don't think so.