There is one sin I’ve come across more frequently in my career than I wish and it always bothers me. Some would call it a little sin, but I think it’s a bigger one because the impact goes further than people imagine. I call it the sin of omission. It happens when someone intentionally leaves out a part of the truth, not a big part, but a significant part. They tell you bits of the truth, but not all of it, leaving out the key bits of information. You are told just enough to give you the impression that it is different from what really happened.
It’s like when I was a young boy and I wanted to go to the neighborhood confectionary with my friend. I could have asked, “John and I want to go to the store, may I go?” Instead we made it sound like one was already going, so I would ask my mother, “can I go to the store with John”, and he’d ask his mother, “can I go to the store with Dale.” Both moms would say yes. We never lied, but we never told the truth either.
Why do people do it? It’s usually self-preservation, or that’s what they think. Because they know that if all the information is shared with me, they won’t look good because it usually means they’ve messed up. What they don’t understand is the telling the whole truth can be dealt with, and then you move on. Mess ups happen and if it’s not a repeat mess up of the same thing, you live and learn. In that moment, they want to protect themselves and don’t realize the truth will come out, it always does. Sometimes I would learn it later, but often how they answer my initial question leads to asking more questions, and even more until I learn the truth. (People have always hated my questions.) Once I know they’ve told me only a partial truth, they have an even bigger problem than they realize. They’ve lost my trust in them. Once trust is lost, it takes a long time to repair.
Why? Because withholding of information isn’t accidental, it’s intentional. The person I’m dealing with made a conscious decision to remain silent, or to exclude or not share the information that was important for me, or if you’re in my shoes, for you to know. They could have done the right thing and shared, but they chose not to.
It’s hard to get past when it happens to you. It’s even harder if the person is a leader in your organization, a peer or a friend. I recall Martin Luther King Jr. once saying,
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
There is another way of leaving out information that is more subtle, but to me it’s equally problematic. The person omitting the information justifies not sharing in their mind because they weren’t asked directly for it. Typically, it happens when there is an advantage to the person not sharing, and they were hoping not to be asked directly, because they don’t want to lie, but they also don’t want to have to answer the question.
Let me share an example. In many organizations allow and even encourage staff transfer to other departments within the organization. Imagine being the manager whose employee requests to transfer to work in another department, and they’ve been working with them to fix deficiencies in teamwork and attendance issues that crop up when there are key deadlines. They receive a phone call about their employee from the other department manager who asks about the employee’s performance regarding their production and customer service but never asks directly about their work in a team environment or about attendance. Will they share fully and completely? I hope so, because remember, you work in the same organization. You’re on the same team and if they later find out, how will they trust you as a peer? What will happen to your reputation?
As hard as it is, tell the whole story all the time and you’ll remain someone others trust.
Stop lying to each other; tell the truth, for we are parts of each other and when we lie to each other, we are hurting ourselves. Ephesians 4:25 (TLB)
