The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
~ John F. Kennedy
We live in a strange world today. Fake, Ai generated imagery and news and are swallowing us whole.
But this is hardly news to you, is it?
More importantly we live in a world where a lot of people make false claims (about their skills, the business, how they can help, “everything is going according to plan”).
Many times I’ve been hired as a Player Coach to help a team with just their development practices (TDD), to figure out the team had a way bigger problem. Every time this has happened I’ve told my customers and advised them to change course in the current tenure of our contract. Most of them agree to such a request and are quite thankful that I took that burden from them (they are releaved from challenging their narrative they know was false).
I remember a customer years ago in Chicago. When we were defining my day rate they proposed a (frankly unusally high) day rate. I could have taken that amount and made some good money from it, but I chose to ask how much they were charging their customer for a day of my work; it was the same amount. I promptly asked them to pay me at least 15% less than they’d initially offered. Puzzled they looked at me and asked me why I was ready to get paid less; “Personally I think that we should have a win win situation here, and by paying me what you offered you would not be making any profit from my work (apart from my skills), which I think is wrong”, I replied.
When speaking the truth something else happens, you speak (or have a high chance of speaking) with integrity.