Honesty vs. Transparency

In defining my values as a person lately, I thought about honesty. While honesty matters to me, but it is not the bar I hold myself to as a technology professional. Honesty is telling the truth when asked. It is accurate, but it can still be incomplete. Incomplete truth creates gaps, and gaps create risk. Transparency is what fills those gaps with the context people need to make good decisions.

Learning the Hard Way Early in My Career

I had just closed on a condo when I lost my job. A few months into my mortgage, I was terrified. I went on a handful of interviews and took the first offer I received, not because it was the perfect fit, but because I needed the job for stability. The timeline still sticks with me. I interviewed on Tuesday, accepted on Wednesday, started on Thursday, and resigned Friday morning.

The interview went well. I focused my questions on what I would build, where my career could go, and the types of systems I would be working on. They mentioned office space on the second floor of the building and gave me a quick walkthrough. It was a small company and the office was quiet that day, but nothing seemed unusual. I assumed I was joining a standard team, in a standard office, doing standard engineering work.

On day one, I arrived and filled out HR paperwork. Then they told me I needed to drive to a consultant office about thirty minutes away. That was the first moment where the ground shifted. This was not a minor detail in my book. It fundamentally changed what the job was. Driving all around Chicago was not something I was up for. There wasn't even going to be reimbursement for using my car!

In hindsight, it is obvious that the traveling should have been discussed before an offer was accepted. Not because it is inherently bad, but because it affects your life, your routine, and your boundaries.

I was young enough to think I should just take the hit, learn the lesson, and keep an open mind. I needed the job.

I arrived at my first assignment and immediately felt lost. I was told to call a phone number with no name attached. I had no clear point of contact, no onboarding plan, and no setup. I was working off my own laptop with my own tooling, which raises questions I did not even know how to ask until later in my career. Heck, I didn't even know what part of town I was in!

After about thirty minutes, someone eventually let me in, walked me to a small office, gave me a quick verbal summary of a project that was supposedly in its early stages, and told me my first task was to code email templates. There were no real requirements, just a rough idea of what they wanted. I did what developers do in ambiguity. I started building with what details I had, and would fill in the gaps later.

About ninety minutes later, he returned and said he wanted me to meet the client so they could explain the project. Before the meeting, he pulled me aside and added context that changed everything. The project was far behind. The client believed it was nearly complete. Then he told me he wanted me to introduce myself as a QA professional who was there to start the QA process.

I clarified that I was an engineer. He understood. He still wanted me to represent myself as QA. It was still my first day.

When I got home, I realized the issue was not simply a rough first day. It was an integrity problem. If this organization was willing to misrepresent progress to a client and misrepresent my role to cover a delivery gap, then I had no reason to believe they would be truthful with me when it mattered. I went along with it in the moment because I felt trapped by the timing and my finances, but I felt disgusted with myself. I needed the job.

Before 8 AM the next morning, I resigned from the job I needed.

I cannot remember the names of the companies involved. I barely knew anything beyond a marketing brochure and the experience of a single day. But that day clarified something fundamental: honesty is a value I will not violate. And over time, I have realized that honesty is also not enough.

That company could claim they were honest. They did have a position open. I would work with clients. They never explicitly promised I would not travel. They simply omitted information that any reasonable person would consider material. Honesty without context becomes a technicality. It can be “true” while still being misleading.

Transparency Builds Respect

Transparency is different. Transparency is proactively sharing information that helps other people plan, decide, and manage risk. In a hiring conversation, that would have looked like simple, responsible questions: Do you have reliable transportation? Are you comfortable driving to client sites? Are you willing to move between locations across the city? That is not oversharing. That is respecting the other person’s ability to evaluate the position.

There are limits, of course. Not all information can be shared. Some things are confidential, legally restricted, or inappropriate for broad distribution. Transparency is not the same as publishing everything to everyone. It is the discipline of sharing what is relevant, verifiable, and impactful.

Later in my career, I took a role that was objectively brutal. There were many nights that went until morning, and stretches where I worked for extended periods with minimal rest. I showed up to family events exhausted and missed things that mattered. The overall message from most of my friends and family was quit.

I did not need this job. I did not quit.

The difference was trust, and trust came from transparency.

I believed in my direct supervisor. We shared the same instinct to do right by the customer, and we shared a genuine passion for the craft of building systems that work. I did not yet understand the full value system of the company, but I understood his. He was direct with everyone, and expected it in return. If my work was not up to standard, he said so. If I nailed something, he said so. He did not hide risk, soften reality, or let problems drift until they became emergencies. Everything he asked of me, he demanded of himself. That feedback loop gave me a clear model of expectations, and it gave me the confidence to adjust quickly.

Transparency isn't always easy

That is what transparency does in engineering environments. It reduces guessing. It reduces politics. It reduces the cognitive overhead of interpreting what is really going on. When leaders and teams are transparent, engineers can spend their energy on execution and problem solving instead of reading between the lines.

The book Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey frames trust as something you can build deliberately through both character and competence, and Covey explicitly calls out “Create Transparency” as a key behavior. The point is not theatrical openness. It is being real, telling the truth in a way others can verify, and avoiding the illusion that things are different than they are. When you apply that thinking to delivery, and stakeholder management, the impact is fairly clear... low trust environments create unnecessary red tape because everyone is compensating for uncertainty. High trust environments move faster because people can act on reality.

Transparency still requires judgment. If someone is insecure, manipulative, or incentivized to weaponize information, broadcasting it more is probably a bad idea. In technology, there are some rules designed to protect the company, like not exposing production systems or sensitive data “in the name of transparency.” Strong teams pair transparency with good controls, clear access models, and deliberate communication. It can also reduce meetings, but that can be a different post.

When I look back on the day I quit after my first day, and I contrast it with the nights I stayed late for a leader I trusted, the values are clear. I can handle hard work. I can handle ambiguity. I can handle pressure. What I will not tolerate is being asked to operate around deceptive behavior where words are technically true but strategically misleading.