The Paradox of Transparency

For some reason (which I am still unsure of), I really enjoy paradoxes and ironies. There is something about them that tickles my mind. For example, the principle of obliquity. Bill Gates is insanely rich because rather than set out to be insanely rich he set out to build cool software. The Beatles are insanely famous because they set out to make great music, not because they set out to be famous. By the way, too many struggling musicians fail to understand this concept.

Anyway, I was reminded of this in the aftermath of the GMTV scandal. When the story broke, many irate customers mobbed the GMTV message boards to voice their concerns. GMTV responded by shutting down the website. When senior executives were asked to comment, they refused to do so. All this made me think that they should have heeded the paradox of transparency.

The paradox of transparency was coined by one of my colleagues in Corporate Affairs. It says that when bad news breaks, you make sure you are completely open to share every relevant piece of information. We all make mistakes after all, and pretending otherwise is just stupid. It's more important to be trusted than to be thought to be perfect.And the way to be trusted is to be open about your mess ups.

Of course, we've heard all this before.