A question of honesty
In this episode, we explore why honesty matters, everywhere - all the way out to a fully global scale…
The invitation to join their company had come out of the blue. They were one of the big-consultancies in the industry; a big reputation and all that. And I’d built a fair reputation myself over the previous few years, regarded as a key innovator for the field. It looked like it would be a good match.
The first interview went well. Everything looked good, from both sides. Only one step left, they said: they wanted me to do a half-hour phone interview with their lead-consultant for this specific field in which I worked.
Everything fine at first: clearly I’d answered his questions well, removed any doubts and all that. But then at what would have been somewhen around the halfway mark, up comes this innocent-seeming question: Would I always tell the customer the truth?
Yes, I said, of course I would. After all, how on earth could the customer make the right decisions if we don’t tell them the honest facts?
At first, there was no response from my interviewer, other than a brief silence. Not a word. Then a click, as the line went down. Call ended; end of interview.
I never did hear from them again. Not once. Not even to tell me that I hadn’t got the job.
In that company, it seemed, a commitment to telling the truth was the one crucial criterion that automatically disqualifies a candidate.
Hmm…
And yes, I know first-hand what the consequences for a business can be when a consultancy’s people lie…
It was way back in the early 1980s. I was one of the people who’d invented what’s now called desktop-publishing, and our small business needed to expand. We were then based in a small town out in the back end of Somerset, in south-west England, and we knew that if the business was going to take off in the way that we knew it could, we would need to open another branch out where the real work was, somewhere around the City of London. We’d need some serious investment, to rent the right kind of place, get the right staff, and buy another typesetting-machine that we knew would cost more than my house. To get that, we’d need the advice of people who knew what they were doing in that kind of world - which we knew we didn’t. A good friend who ran a much larger business than ours recommended a big accountancy-firm with a big reputation; we got in touch with them, set up a meeting, prepared all the paperwork that they’d need. All looking good.
At the meeting, the consultants took a brief look at our plans, made various recommendations - all the usual stuff. They showed us how we could get the funds - but the catch was that it depended entirely on getting our present accounts redone into a different format. And it had to be done straight away, no more than a week or two at most, because the timing was critical. They could do that for us, they said. For a fee, of course. They would put a senior consultant onto it as soon as they got back to their offices, they said. A bit scary, the risks we were to take in this, but yes, their advice must be sound, given the huge size of the firm and their huge international reputation.
A week went by. We received their bill, an eye-watering sum, at senior-consultant’s rates - but nothing else. We winced, of course, but we accepted that things can take a little more time. No worries.
Another week gone by. Another eye-watering bill. Nothing else: not even a phone call. Just a bland message from someone’s secretary saying that everything was fine, just a brief delay, that’s all. We were a bit concerned at that, but not actually worried. Not yet.
Another week; and another; and another. Still absolutely nothing, other than that now-weekly bill. We called, and called again, but no-one called back. Not once. We were starting to panic by then…
Then, at last, we had a phone-call. Not from any of the senior consultants we’d talked with before, and for whom we’d been so repeatedly billed. No: it was from a junior member of their staff - or rather, a now-former member of their staff - that they’d assigned to do the work. But they’d never given him anything to work with. All of our records had just sat in someone’s drawer, entirely ignored, entirely forgotten. We were so small that we weren’t worth bothering with, apparently. And they had messed him around so much that he’d given up: he was leaving the company, the country, the entire industry. He was just calling to apologise to us: there was nothing else he could do.
We were stranded. We’d already rented the London office, hired the staff, got everything ready to go: but we still didn’t have the equipment. We couldn’t buy the equipment, because we didn’t have the bank-loan we needed, and we couldn’t get the loan because the accountants hadn’t delivered the accounts. Hadn’t even started. And they wouldn’t answer any of our calls. So we were screwed: huge expenses, no possible income. Very, very scary…
We talked it through with our big-business friend: understandably incensed, he called them on our behalf. And yes, they responded to him all right, especially when he talked about dropping his company’s contract with them. So yes, they did come down to meet with us. Sort of.
They lied, about everything. It was obvious that they were lying about everything. They gave us back our paperwork, completely untouched - but still demanded full payment for all of the work that they hadn’t actually done. And then left, without a word.
We never heard from them again. But we did hear from our bank, a week or two later: seems that those consultants had been sending them false information about our financial status, trying to get us bankrupted so as cover up their lies and protect their entirely unwarranted reputation.
Sigh…
And yes, they did win, in a way. No, we didn’t quite end up bankrupt: that was one success for us, I suppose. But we did lose the company: the whole thing was sold for a pittance to someone who didn’t really understand what it was that they’d bought. And that was the end of that: half a decade’s-worth of unmatched innovations, all of it years ahead of the market, that were all but thrown away. Oh well.
“Don’t be surprised”, said a colleague. “Lies are everywhere in the commercial world - they’re seen as an essential part of doing good business. Protecting the organisation is seen as much more important than protecting the client.”
Ouch…
So yes, lies do indeed have consequences.
Usually for someone else, at first.
But ultimately for everyone - including the liars.
We need the truth, everywhere, always. We can’t run a viable business without it.
We can’t run a viable world without it.
That’s the real point here, perhaps.
The reason for the reduced price, is that you providing training in the particular context, so that they can be deployed at the next sucker as a SME. Continuous loop complete.
Tom, “Don’t be surprised”, said a colleague. “Lies are everywhere in the commercial world - they’re seen as an essential part of doing good business. Protecting the organisation is seen as much more important than protecting the client.” a pure gem. I was subjected to a hate campaign as a result of commenting that the approach used was antiquated and had no relevance to the topic in question, the final document produced recommended a solution where the large consultancy just happened to have many unused resources, who could be supplied at a reduced price to deliver such a solution.
This story did not end well, but is a subject for another post.