His Litmus Test: To Thine Own Comfort Be True

The only time a boss has ever told me to lie was about 30 years ago, when I was the head of the engineering department of a firm that manufactured process-control computers. The company had sold a computer system to a Japanese firm with a fixed delivery date. I realized that we weren’t going to deliver on time about a week before this deadline, so I spoke with the vice president of marketing. My suggestion was that we alert the customer about the project’s “slip.” His decision was that we would say nothing to the client about the delay.

I wasn’t at all comfortable with this lie by omission, but I’d only been with the company for six months, and I had a young family to support. Since arguing the issue with him or going over his head to the CEO would have cost me my position, I didn’t push it. A week later, six Japanese engineers arrived at the plant for the pre-delivery demonstration. It was my job to tell them that we hadn’t completed the project. When their translator finished telling them the truth, you could have heard a pin drop. They couldn’t believe a large U.S. corporation hadn’t lived up to its commitment.

The company’s solution was to send the Japanese engineers on an all-expenses-paid tour around the country to visit installations similar to the one we were manufacturing for their operation. My solution was to promise myself that I’d never again do something I wasn’t comfortable with. This promise was tested six months later, when I was ordered to fire a good engineer for a minor infraction. It wasn’t right, so I refused. The only consequence was that he ended up staying with the company longer than I did.