Public Administartion with Integrity.

By: Art Jannicelli
www.WhatTheHellAmIDoingHere.com

Honesty is always the best policy. A public administrator has a duty and moral obligation to always tell the truth. This obligation to integrity must be followed at all times, even when dealing with the lowest members of society, and all the way up to the president. Deception is never justified.

To understand why honesty is always best, we must first understand lying. Lying is defined as “A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.” So now that we know what lying is and we all acknowledge it is morally and ethically wrong. We have to ask why we lie in the first place.

Lies usually take the form of excuses. Put simply, a lie is usually a false excuse. Excuses are explanations of failure. Therefore, when you lie you are usually just trying to give a false explanation for your failure.

Let us be realistic, leaders generally do not care about your excuses, they just know that you failed, your failure is the important point. They really have no desire to hear an excuse. Whether that excuse is true or not, however if you lie and your leader finds out, you will suffer a great loss of trust. Therefore, since no one wants to hear your excuses anyway, why bother potentially making a bigger problem by telling a lie.

Now on the other hand, you might say, “Then what am I supposed to do?” I say take responsibility and give no excuses. People admire those who are willing to take responsibility and have integrity. Therefore, by not lying not only would you not have to worry about being found out, you might also gain respect for doing the right thing.

Another thing you can do to stay out of a position where you might be tempted to lie, is never make a promise you are not 100% sure you can keep. If you only give your word when you are sure, people will value your word even more, because they know your word is a guarantee.

A common exception people try to make to excuse a lie is, “It was just a little white lie.” White lies are usually lies out of pity or to prevent someone harm. The answer to this is simple; use the truth, but not the whole truth. If someone asks you, “Do you think I'll win?” Say something along the lines of “Well you have the same chances as anyone else.” The key here is you do not have to tell the whole truth, just the helpful truth. That way you don't have to keep track of white lies you've told in the past and it's easier to someone, “Let me tell you the whole truth.” Rather then, “Please don't be mad, but I wasn't honest with you about…”

Some people might a call a half honest approach as bad as a white lie. Yet, everyone should realize that not everyone is ready for the truth. Either, because they cannot emotionally handle it, or they will not understand the whole truth. It then becomes necessary to soften the blow or dumb it down. The key though is to never lose your integrity.

This same code of ethics works for Public Administrators as well. Lying for them is usually going to be a matter of covering up a failure. Can you imagine what kind of positive public response government agencies would get if they responded to problems in the following way, “Yes, we acknowledge there is a problem, and we are working our hardest to correct it.” People love to hear this kind of reassurance. Denying the existence of a blatant problem only inspires distrust and resentment among the public.

A public administrator should always hold to these ethics whether they are dealing with low-income slum tenants or their third line manager. Treating everyone equally is crucial to maintaining integrity. People respect strictness as long as it is carried over everyone. If you treat everyone the same people, they will not mind as much, because they know their richer or poorer neighbor has to do the same things.

Deception is never justified, because there is never a good reason to engage in dishonesty. There is always a way to use the truth to accomplish your ends. A helpful tool for that is the idea of real reason vs. good reason. Your good reason is why you tell people you did or said something. Your real reason is what you do not tell them. This is also not lying because as long as you are good reason is a consequence of the action being explained, you are not telling a lie.

Honesty is the best policy. Lies and deceptions are used to make excuses and save people harm. However, these same ends can be accomplished with the truth with even greater result. Just be sure to only make promises you can keep. Following these rules, it is possible for a public administrator to have excellent integrity in all facets of their job.