Photo by Lori Greig

A husband neglects to tell his wife that he forgot to fill up her car after using all of her gas.  A child doesn’t mention that he failed a science test because it’s close to Christmas.  You neglect to tell your boss that you came in 20 minutes late this morning.  What do these minor sins of omission have in common?  The people who’ve been kept in the dark will find out about it, eventually.

Everybody does it

I guess you could call it karma, or what comes around goes around.  Many times, we don’t share the entire truth with people because A. We don’t want to hurt their feelings, or B. We don’t want to catch a rash of shit for our mistakes.  Probably more often the latter.  I know that I’ve kept things quiet a number of times, usually for my own benefit.  It must be that selfish gene that I was born with; it causes many of my character flaws.

No big deal

Most of these secrets are harmless.  We rationalize them away, because they are minor offenses.  But what happens when we extend our tolerance, and really start to slack off?  What happens when we’re tempted to cover up a major screw-up with silence?  If the inevitable happens, and someone finds out that could do you harm, you’re screwed.  Just like some of the leaders of my company’s finance department.

Big rationalizations

See, there was some concern over the accuracy of our financial statements.  It seems that our leader was turning a blind eye to some shady accounting practices.  I guess he figured that what the auditors didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.  But we have some pretty sharp auditors, the kind that take delight in pouring over balance sheets with a fine-toothed comb.  They get even more excited when they spot something fishy.

Repercussions

So, our finance honcho and his henchmen started to circle the wagons.  This raised even more suspicion (There’s that thing that I mentioned about being found out).  And believe me, there’s hell to pay when you’ve crossed an auditor, and they find out about it.  So, for our CFO, his sin of omission cost him, and his staff, their jobs.

So, if you’re going to keep something to yourself, make sure it’s a minor thing.  You don’t want to get nailed for a big screw-up.  Come clean early; it might save your job.

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