Is Honesty Overrated?
What If We’ve Been Set Up to Fail?
We grow up hearing the same phrases on repeat. Always tell the truth. Honesty is the best policy. God sees everything. We hear it from our parents, from teachers, from religious leaders. And as children, we absorb it without question.
But here’s what we didn’t see at the time. Those same parents sometimes told little lies to avoid conflict. The teacher who preached “integrity” punished students for speaking truths that made the classroom uncomfortable. The religious leader who spoke of transparency hid their own human flaws.
It wasn’t always hypocrisy. Sometimes it was protection. Sometimes fear. Sometimes simply a way to get through the day. But we still inherited the ideal. And we inherited it as if it were an absolute law of life — to be honest, no matter what, or risk being seen as less than good.
Over time, something happens. We grow into adults, still holding this standard, still expecting ourselves to live up to it perfectly. And when we can’t, when we tell a small lie or withhold a truth, it isn’t just guilt we feel. It’s failure. A failure of character, not just of action.
I remember the first time I truly questioned this. I had spoken up in a team meeting, revealing a behind-the-scenes decision that I believed was affecting my team’s morale and workload. I was calm. I was factual. I was honest. And for the next six months, I paid for it. Conversations stopped when I entered the room. My projects were reassigned. My role, once central, was quietly sidelined.
Truth didn’t set me free. It cost me something. And it made me wonder: Is honesty really a universal virtue? Or is it a privilege reserved for those who can afford the fallout?
We rarely ask ourselves why we value the things we value. We inherit them like old furniture, carrying them from one phase of life to another without stopping to see if they still fit the space we live in now. Honesty, transparency, full disclosure — these are good things in theory. But in practice, they can be messy, costly, and even destructive.
Do we value honesty more than peace? Do we value truth more than someone’s emotional safety? Do we want transparency at the expense of trust? These are uncomfortable questions, because they force us to admit something: perhaps honesty has been overvalued. Perhaps we have set ourselves up to fail by holding it as an ideal we cannot, and do not, live up to — and then using that same standard to judge others.
What if we gave ourselves permission to choose our own values consciously, instead of inheriting them unquestioned? What if you decided that compassion mattered more to you than brutal honesty? That trust was more valuable than full disclosure? That you could forgive a lie if you understood the reason behind it?
Letting go of inherited values isn’t moral weakness. It’s maturity. It’s the realisation that human beings will bend the truth, not always out of malice, but often out of care, fear, or necessity. And when we accept that in ourselves, we also stop condemning it in others.
Maybe that is where the real honesty lies — not in rigid adherence to a rule, but in acknowledging that life is more complex than the slogans we were raised on. And in that acknowledgement, perhaps we finally make peace with the truth. So where do we go from here? Is it OK to lie? Do we live our lives liege at the slightest excuse? And not confront and be responsible for our actions. Join us for the final part of this trilogy of Bog articles on speaking and adhering to the truth and nothing but the truth.
