Dave Traynor says it best in the IABC Cafe comments section, when he sums up what transparency is all about for business communications, following an IABC workshop in Toronto called The Naked Communicator:
"I don’t think there is a right answer at the moment to the question of what delivering transparent communications means. As someone pointed out at the conference, the appropriate response to a lot of questions is often “It all depends.” But talking about it, at a conference, or in a blog, or to your colleagues, is the right thing to do.
"Personally, I think that honesty is always the best policy. It seems simple enough, but it’s amazing how many people’s knee-jerk response is the opposite. I see my role as being to ensure that the messages that make up the stories I tell are the truth. And I know that if they aren’t, someone is going to figure that out."
My point in the same comments section is that "be honest" implies a stronger moral imperative than "tell the truth," which leaves you open to many sins of omission.
Check out more of Dave's writing on The Daily Upload, or check out Warren Bickford's coverage of the The Naked Communicator workshop: Day 1, Day 2.
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