Truth and Consequences Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we tell our children to deceive. -with apologies to Sir Walter Scott. By Miriam Schulman We're having a little problem with lying at my house: My daughter, Sophie, won't do it. "Do you like my new bike?" asks her schoolmate. Sophie, age 8, is paralyzed into muteness by her conscience. Her friend is hurt. "Couldn't you find something nice to say about it, like the color?" I ask. I am thinking of the story about Judy Garland, who, after seeing a pal in a terrible play, swept into her friend's dressing room with the line, "How do you do it, my dear, night after night?" But this will not do for Sophie, who knows a fraud when she hears one. No, a lie is a lie; she's a total Kantian on this subject. The philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that truth-telling is a "perfect duty," one so basic that it cannot be overridden by other values—not even saving the life of a friend, let alone sparing someone's feelings. In Kant's formulation, if asked outright, a person would be obligated to tell a murderer the whereabouts of his intended victim. Of course, many have responded to Kant with the penetrating philosophical counterthrust: "Oh, come on!" Or, as moral philosophers Daniel Maguire and A. Nicholas Fargnoli put it in their book On Moral Grounds, "Very simply, Kant would not be the man you would want to stand between you and someone intent on murdering you—at least if Kant knew where you were." In fact, Maguire and Fargnoli use Kant's stance on lying to explore the limits of the quest for universal moral principles. "Universalization is an unrealistic and inaccurate abstraction that passes over the fact that there are exceptions to valid moral principles," they write. "To protect other values, like the life of an intended victim or a legitimate secret, exceptions to truth-telling must be made." Most of us, I suspect, are utilitarians on the subject of truthfulness, deciding whether to lie based on the possible consequences: Trivial fibs that hurt no one are acceptable; whoppers that injure others are not. I point out to Sophie that even the commandment seems to make this distinction. It does not say, "Thou shalt not lie"; it says, "Thou shalt not bear false witness." This, I explain, means that it's a major sin to deceive when the consequences for another person could be grave, such as in a court of law, or when the teacher asks, "Did you break the computer?" But lies that do no harm—such as telling your grandmother you would indeed like the purple sweater she's knitting for you—might, perhaps, be tolerated. Sophie remains unconvinced. She would not be upset if she received the purple sweater; she would even wear it to please her grandmother. But she does not want to lie about it. At some intuitive level, I think she senses that the utilitarian approach to lying has its own limits. Judged one instance at a time, any "harmless" lie may be trivial, but the habitual telling of white l ...

1. Truth and Consequences
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we tell our
children to deceive.
-with apologies to Sir Walter Scott.
By Miriam Schulman
We're having a little problem with lying at my house: My
daughter, Sophie, won't do it.
"Do you like my new bike?" asks her schoolmate. Sophie, age 8,
is paralyzed into muteness by her conscience. Her friend is hurt.
"Couldn't you find something nice to say about it, like the
color?" I ask. I am thinking of the story about Judy Garland,
who, after seeing a pal in a terrible play, swept into her friend's
dressing room with the line, "How do you do it, my dear, night
after night?"
But this will not do for Sophie, who knows a fraud when she
hears one. No, a lie is a lie; she's a total Kantian on this subject.
The philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that truth-telling is a
"perfect duty," one so basic that it cannot be overridden by
other values—not even saving the life of a friend, let alone
sparing someone's feelings. In Kant's formulation, if asked
outright, a person would be obligated to tell a murderer the
whereabouts of his intended victim.
Of course, many have responded to Kant with the penetrating
philosophical counterthrust: "Oh, come on!" Or, as moral
philosophers Daniel Maguire and A. Nicholas Fargnoli put it in
their book On Moral Grounds, "Very simply, Kant would not be
the man you would want to stand between you and someone
intent on murdering you—at least if Kant knew where you
were."
In fact, Maguire and Fargnoli use Kant's stance on lying to
explore the limits of the quest for universal moral principles.
"Universalization is an unrealistic and inaccurate abstraction
that passes over the fact that there are exceptions to valid moral
principles," they write. "To protect other values, like the life of

2. an intended victim or a legitimate secret, exceptions to truth-
telling must be made."
Most of us, I suspect, are utilitarians on the subject of
truthfulness, deciding whether to lie based on the possible
consequences: Trivial fibs that hurt no one are acceptable;
whoppers that injure others are not.
I point out to Sophie that even the commandment seems to make
this distinction. It does not say, "Thou shalt not lie"; it says,
"Thou shalt not bear false witness." This, I explain, means that
it's a major sin to deceive when the consequences for another
person could be grave, such as in a court of law, or when the
teacher asks, "Did you break the computer?" But lies that do no
harm—such as telling your grandmother you would indeed like
the purple sweater she's knitting for you—might, perhaps, be
tolerated.
Sophie remains unconvinced. She would not be upset if she
received the purple sweater; she would even wear it to please
her grandmother. But she does not want to lie about it.
At some intuitive level, I think she senses that the utilitarian
approach to lying has its own limits. Judged one instance at a
time, any "harmless" lie may be trivial, but the habitual telling
of white lies may ultimately lead to undesirable consequences.
Philosopher Sissela Bok makes this point in her book Lying:
"The failure to look at an entire practice rather than at their own
isolated case often blinds liars to cumulative harm and
expanding deceptive activities. Those who begin with white lies
can come to resort to more frequent and more serious
ones....The aggregate harm from a large number of marginally
harmful instances may, therefore, be highly undesirable in the
end- for liars, those deceived, and honesty and trust more
generally."
To Bok, all lies are dangerous because the practice of telling
even the smallest of them may seep into general use, corrupting
the fibber and ultimately the very fiber of discourse. She
underlines this tendency of lies to "spread."
I think Sophie fears this spread and the impact it may have on

3. her own identity as a person of integrity. Truthfulness is an
organizing trait for her—at the heart of the way she perceives
herself.
In this, I suppose, she is a true believer in what philosophers
call "virtue ethics." As such, she does not focus on each
particular decision to dissemble or speak the truth; rather, she
cultivates the virtue of honesty to the point where it is second
nature. As University of Texas Philosophy Professor Richard
Solomon writes, "The honest man is not so much one who
refrains from lying, much less one who resists the temptation to
lie because he or she knows that it is wrong to lie; he or she
just...does not lie."
Sophie is a child so conscientious that she berates herself for
not being truthful when one of her classmates—now a
hypersophisticated 8-year-old—poses the taunting question,
"Who still likes Barney?" and she cannot bring herself to admit
publicly that she is still among the purple guy's fans.
When she brings this dilemma to me, I try to let her off the
hook. Barney, I point out, is not a person. It would be wrong to
deny liking a real-life friend, but Barney is a dinosaur. "Maybe
sometime," I say, "you'll feel comfortable enough and strong
enough to tell your friends what you really think, but Barney
will not be hurt if you don't stand up for him."
A few days later, Sophie and her buddy are having milk and fish
crackers at my kitchen table when I overhear the following
conversation:
"You know when Trevor was saying, 'Who likes Barney?'" my
daughter reminds her friend. "Well, I really do kind of like
Barney."
There is a moment of silence. Then her playmate grins with
relief. "I do, too," she admits.
This is the last time I presume to counsel Sophie about
deception. Through her, I have come to realize that, just as lies
may spread, so may honesty. The world—even the world of the
playground—needs its truth-tellers. They open a space for the
rest of us to confront our own fears and moral shortcuts.

4. Besides, there is something bracing about having a child who'll
give you the straight goods, even if it means she's not prepared
to commit to such popular kid effusions as, "You're the best
mommy in the whole world!" After all, she hasn't met all the
other mommies, and, even compared against myself, she might
easily point out that I've been known to give her some awfully
bad advice.
The Nexus of the Law and Ethics
Immoral or illegal, or both? Intrinsically evil or rendered wrong
by statute? When contemplating how business leaders make
decisions, perhaps it's not necessary to parse the ethics of a
specific choice, or focus on what morally could or should be
done.
The key to ethical decision making mostly lies in the
determination of what is "smart," according to Joseph
Grundfest, professor of law and business at the Stanford Law
School and a nationally recognized expert on corporate
governance.
It's relatively straightforward to ascertain whether something is
legal. But ethical deliberations can get impractically messy, he
said. Grundfest asserted that it's more productive for businesses
to ask the question, "Is it smart?" rather than wade into a
morass of moral questions. His lively comments sparked a brisk
debate at the Nov. 14 Business and Organizational Ethics
Partnership meeting sponsored by SCU's Markkula Center For
Applied Ethics.
Grundfest, a former Securities and Exchange Commission
member, and former staff member for the President's Council of
Economic Advisors, posited that business leaders don't respond
positively to ethics discussions when looking at what's best for
their companies. Their motivation, once they dispatch the
question of legality – that is, does any law preclude the
contemplated course of action – is to behave in a way that is
good, "smart," for business. Thus, a completely legal action –
say a particular investment – may be utterly counterproductive

5. when it comes to public appearances, negative publicity and the
potential for investigation or litigation, he told the roomful of
Bay Area business executives, and ethics and compliance offers.
Nor are ethics and smartness mutually exclusive concepts, he
said. Most of the time, the ethical course of action will end up
being the one that is good for the company's bottom line and
reputation as well.
Grundfest's rationale raised the hackles of Kirk O. Hanson,
director of the Markkula Center, who bemoaned the notion of
underpinning decisions with the "smart" question while
sidelining an up-front discussion of what is and is not ethical.
"We ethicists have to raise an objection," Hanson protested. As
a business executive, to say something is not smart "from a self-
interested, capitalist view, I am not going to be sensitive to all
the ethical questions that I may face. I'm going to miss many
more of these that you claim are not smart, because I'm not
asking the ethical question" as it relates to all of the
stakeholders involved in the decision, he said.
Further, a person's sensibilities on moral behavior are
compromised, "by saying you don't ever have to think about
ethics, but you just have to think about smartness," he said.
"Unless you have a model in your head of what is ethical and
what's not, you're never going to get to the smart question."
Grundfest insisted that "99 percent of the time" the smart
question will result in an ethical decision. Several of the
attendees applauded the philosophy as a business standard.
The problem Grundfest outlined was that "by framing the
questions in terms of the word ethical, you hit so many
emotional hot buttons." Addressing legality is not so
complicated but people disagree on what's ethical, and such
disagreements bog down decision making, he said, because
"calling something ethical is a loaded term." By hewing to
what's legal and what's smart for the company, the business
leaders will do a better job than by saying, "We are going to
have high standards of ethics at this company, as a practical
matter," he concluded.

6. Grundfest noted the evolving nature of what constitutes ethical
behavior as societal views shift over time and geography, with
laws changing accordingly on such topics as same-sex marriage,
abortion, and less controversial issues like divorce. Different
states and communities, civil and religious, hold different views
that complicate ethical discussions in business, and make the
"smart" question even more useful, he added.
These different views are at the heart of the law and ethics
challenge, he said. It is up to society to ascertain which
behaviors are so reprehensible that they merit a ban or
regulation, and in a democracy representing many points of
view, sometimes those decisions simply have not been made.