Lies We Tell In Leadership, Part 5: Lying to a Dying Person
Lies We Tell In Leadership, Part 5: Lying to a Dying Person
Lies to children • Taking secrets to the grave • Shifting sands in the Desert of Good Intentions
Deep in the nether regions of Leadership Land, you sit in a dark corner of Liar’s Lair with the sculptor whom you met in Part 4.
“I would’ve guessed he’s the owner of this tavern,” you remark, your eyes on the grizzled bartender. Then you shift your gaze to the woman sitting across the table from you. “I didn’t expect a sculptor.”
She grins and replies in a low, conspiratorial voice. “Appearances can be deceiving. I used to drive a 12-year-old economy car and wear secondhand clothes, living far below my means. Two decades of stealth wealth allowed me to save up and buy Liar’s Lair from the previous owner. Few people would’ve guessed that I held a lucrative corporate job.”
You raise an eyebrow. “I thought you said you were a painter before you became a sculptor.”
One corner of her mouth tilts upward in a sardonic smile. “Just like Hollywood ‘actresses’ who are really baristas, right? Painting doesn’t pay the bills, you know.”
She gestures toward the roof to indicate the aboveground of Leadership Land. “I painted as a hobby, back when I worked up there. Like a painter, I added lies to my reputation, which got me past the Interview Mountains and into Leadership Land. I continued painting little embellishments onto my track record until I made it out of the Boss Forest and into the Middle Management Foothills. It was there that my lies caught up to me. A rival set me up to fail, and I went careening into the Career Swamp.”
Her expression sours as she recalls the memory. “I came down here to Liar’s Lair and took over this tavern, figuring there’s no shortage of liars and scoundrels like me. I spent a few weeks licking my wounds and have been figuring out what I did wrong ever since. As a result of my soul-searching, I switched from painting to sculpting, and now I’m much happier removing the lies that conceal underlying truths.”
She picks up her tools and resumes working on her marble statue. A long silence follows, punctuated only by the tink, tink of metal on stone. You sit uncomfortably, pondering the most graceful way to offer condolences to a stranger who just told you her origin story.
You finally venture to say, “I’m sorry you had to go through that. What lessons did you learn from the experience?”
Last Christmas, I Gave You my Heart of Falsehoods
The sculptor pauses thoughtfully for a moment before responding. “For starters, I learned that Liar’s Lair is an amoral place. Lying is neither inherently good nor evil here. For example, my father lied to me when I was young. He told me that a fat ninja clad in red and white will infiltrate our home on Christmas Eve, using the smokestack to avoid detection. He will then reverse-burglarize us by leaving valuables behind.
“Now tell me. Does knowingly and willfully telling a falsehood make my father a bad person?”
“Of course not,” you say. “He told you a white lie to build up the anticipation of receiving gifts on Christmas Day.”
“And to trick a gullible kid into good behavior,” says the sculptor with a wry smile. “You assumed good intentions, while I also see some self-interest. Whatever his motivations, they backfired. I mistrusted my father for quite some time after I learned the truth. Five-year-old me figured that if he could lie to me about Santa Claus, he’d lie to me about everything else too. I wasn’t very good at handling nuance back then.”
“What would you do today?” you ask. “Would you tell your children about Santa Claus?”
“Don’t have kids, so I haven’t decided yet,” she says. “I know some parents refuse to tell their kids about Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and other mythical gift-dispensing creatures. They don’t like dishonesty, however benevolent, and don’t want their kids to feel like they deserve treats simply for existing. I admire their commitment to honesty, their willingness to curtail entitlement, and their ability to extinguish all fun from their children’s lives.”
Hiding From the Reaper vs. Hiding the Reaper
The sculptor’s face hardens, and a solemn tone enters her voice. “On a more serious note, I have Chinese friends who tell me about their illnesses and medical diagnoses while withholding that same information from close family members. Some of them even prevent elderly family members from discovering that they have a terminal illness, going as far as falsifying medical records to maintain the lie.”
“What? Why would they do that?” you ask, astonished. In English-speaking countries, such behavior would strip a doctor of their license faster than you can whisper medical malpractice.
“It’s part of their culture to protect family members from unnecessary suffering. They feel a moral obligation to shoulder emotional burdens so that others can live untainted by the shadow of chronic anxiety. When there’s no cure, they believe that it’s more merciful for loved ones to live out their remaining lives in blissful ignorance than to spend their last days futilely struggling against the inevitable. It’s common for families to withhold news of misfortune from students living far away to avoid distracting them from their studies. My friends call these ‘worthwhile lies’ because the keepers of cursed knowledge suffer in silence to spare others the same fate1. They’re the same friends who tell me such intimate details because I’m a detached outsider and wouldn’t be tortured by the impending death of a stranger.”
You pause, trying to wrap your mind around this viewpoint. “I suppose I can see some merits from that side of the argument,” you finally say. “But it still feels wrong. And paternalistic. I wouldn’t want to be kept in the dark about my own fate.”
The sculptor nodded. “I wouldn’t either. But that’s a personal preference arising from my values, having grown up in an English-speaking country. I don’t agree with what my Chinese friends do, but I wouldn’t tell them that my values are objectively superior to theirs. That would be morally presumptuous.”
Deceit from the Desert
The two of you sit in silence for a few moments. The sculptor finally interrupts the reverie. “On one hand, you have a trivial lie about reverse burglaries on Christmas Eve, told by a father who wanted his daughter to be happy. On the other hand, you have life-and-death secrets withheld by Chinese families who want their loved ones to avoid misery. Both deceptions are fraught with unintended consequences.”
The sculptor turns toward one end of Liar’s Lair and points at the sandy tunnel connecting to the Desert of Good Intentions. “You already know how I reacted to my father’s lies. Many of my Chinese friends are tormented by their decisions to keep such heavy secrets from family members. Some regret leaving so many important things unsaid when their loved ones passed away. Others wrestle with the cognitive dissonance of withholding secrets from loved ones, while wishing for the full and transparent truth if they were the ones dying. I don’t know if they realized that they’d be carrying the emotional burden past their loved ones’ deaths, until the end of their own lives.”
“Are you sure that Liar’s Lair is an amoral place?” you ask. “You’ve highlighted a bunch of negative consequences, which makes it sound like you’re against lying.”
“I’m sure,” she replies. “When you strip the moralizing out of Liar’s Lair, you’re left with a simple rule:
Lies are dangerous. Only tell a lie if the benefits outweigh the risks.
“As leaders, it falls on us to weigh the cost-effectiveness of our lies. Occasionally, you’ll get an easy choice – like using a false pretense to lure someone to a surprise party. For weightier matters, like maintaining peace among self-interested colleagues or protecting national security, it’s never easy to weigh the cost-effectiveness of our lies. It may even be impossible, if a given situation is more complex than our brains can handle, or if randomness affects the outcome more than our actions.2”
You nod, thinking of the tough decisions you’ve had to make without complete information.
The sculptor picks up her hammer and chisel. “Let’s talk about cost-effectiveness next time.”
They made a movie about this very topic. It’s very good.
A recurring theme you’ll find in this blog, inherited from Nassim Taleb’s Incerto series, is that the world is more complex and random than we think. We also believe that our brains are less capable than we give them credit for, owing to various biases and blind spots that lead to misjudgment.
Unfortunately, the sense of one’s fallibility weakens under the corrosive influence of hubris. A long string of success can inflate an ego with so much hot air that its buoyancy sends it rocketing up to the stratosphere.