GovernmentExecutive.com

The old cliché, "honesty is the best policy," should be obvious - especially in the wake of recent corporate scandals. Yet lying is so integral to government behavior, sometimes employees don't even know they're doing it. I don't mean spinning, or the blatant cover-ups that so often make headline news. Rather, I'm talking about a more subtle, more intrusive kind of lying that is as destructive as an undiagnosed cancer.

What Lies?

In training sessions on communications, I've met with employees from all levels of government. And, somewhere along the line, the issue of clarity rears its head. The basic premise, of course, is that when you send a message, you intend the reader to grasp what it says. Conversely, when you read a message, you expect that the person sending it is providing you with accurate information. But government language, from regulations to customer service letters, is riddled with ambiguities.

Doubtless, some of these ambiguities result from poor communication skills. Training or a good editor can fix that problem. But many employees decide to deliberately obscure meaning through a variety of mechanisms. One is to omit information - such as by saying "mistakes were made" and not saying who made them. Or take another common phrase: "The information was inaccurate." Why? The answer to that question is missing because the person or persons who provided it are missing from the sentence. So is the answer to other questions, such as: Who is responsible?

In some cases, employees knowingly use jargon so insular and grammatically fractured even the most astute expert can't grasp its meaning. Or they bury pertinent but unpalatable information deep in the bowels of a document, where readers are less likely to see it.

But are these really lies? The answer is yes, for reasons best explained by Sissela Bok, a senior visiting fellow at Harvard University's Center for Population and Development Studies, in her book Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life: "The moral question of whether you are lying or not is not settled by establishing the truth or falsity of what you say. In order to settle this question, we must know whether you intend your statement to mislead."

The reasons why public employees lie are more complicated. In virtually all of the hundreds of seminars I've conducted in government agencies, employees say they alter or conceal their communications for one of the following reasons:

• To protect their agency. Several years ago I conducted a series of satellite training sessions to government employees across the country. Among the group were several attorneys and administrative law judges, who interrupted a session to insist that some points simply shouldn't be clear to protect an agency's interests. "We have loopholes if we need them," one participant said. So deeply imbued were the lies in this agency's culture that the attorneys unabashedly proclaimed their virtues to other employees participating in the session across the country.
• To protect themselves. I recently had a meeting with representatives of an agency who complained that their employees cut and pasted job descriptions into hiring announcements without understanding what the descriptions meant. As a result, the descriptions didn't match the positions and the hiring process was skewed. The same thing happens with other kinds of government communication, ranging from customer service letters to regulations. Too busy, too intimidated or too distracted to ask for help, employees simply pretend to be communicating. The messages are misleading by default.
• To protect their jobs. In espousing the importance of communicating clearly and accurately, I often hear this mantra from employees: "They" - meaning supervisors and, occasionally, editors - "won't let us." That's sometimes true, but it's also frequently used as an excuse by employees who fudge it when it comes to agency indiscretions or personal mistakes because they don't want to put their jobs at risk.

Why Should We Care?

The most obvious reason agencies should care about whether employees lie is that lying is, well, wrong. And tolerance of lies breeds a culture of lying. Employees taught to lie, whether through explicit instruction or merely by example, will use lying as one tool in their survival kit. And the very presence of lies breeds an uncomfortable and demoralizing work environment.

One way to break the cycle of lies is to require the use of plain language. That forces employees to say what they mean, scrapes the cover off cover-ups and reveals ambiguities. But plain language only gets at the tip of the iceberg.

Agencies must focus on the problems that create lies in the first place. This requires more than a quick hand slap or a two-hour training course. Agency leaders must focus on upholding honesty with the same zeal they do other key initiatives, from implementing new technology tools to providing efficient customer service.

Ironically, many federal agencies are responsible for enforcing truthful communication in the commercial arena. The Food and Drug Administration regulates the labeling of everything from over-the-counter medicines to beer. The Office of Personnel Management has helped federal employees learn the truth behind what they're getting from their health plans. I have worked with people at these agencies: they are sincere and driven in their missions.

In most cases, the pursuit of honesty in government is not about infusing a new attitude but in building on what's already there. Either way, the payoff is immense.