You've Got to Be Kidding!: How to Keep Your Job Without Losing Your Integrity

Let’s Face It: A Lie by Any Other Name Is Still a Lie!

I have yet to hear a justifiable reason to ask an employee to lie for his or her boss, and I have never heard an employee satisfactorily explain why she or he absolutely had to do so. Even the “white lie” about the boss’s whereabouts can be circumvented with a simple reply of, “She’s unavailable,” followed by an offer to pass on the message (and if you recall, for security reasons, you don’t want to disclose her location anyway!). I believe the adage: If you tell a lot of white lies, you soon become color-blind!

However, with mounting fears over job security nowadays, many employees may be more ready to cover for the boss despite what their moral compass tells them. Their logic dictates that protecting their boss’s job may, by default, safeguard their own.

But a lie is only a short-term fix. It’s a bad habit that causes even more trouble and an illusion that serves no one well. Randy Cohen, author of the New York Times Magazine’s Ethicist column, states that even the small lies you brush off can snowball and eventually damage your reputation. Cohen explains that, “It’s seldom you get an explicit deal from the devil; these things tend to ‘creep up’ on people. I’m sure that for the most part, these lies are extremely minor and easy to justify, but once you kill the first guy, it’s not so hard to kill the second.”

All lies—whatever they are, and whatever your reason for telling them—are intentionally deceptive messages. They are ...