I think I have a problem with “truth”: I take it too seriously…honestly!

This week I spent time discussing the importance I attach to being truthful and not cheating with my business coach. We were doing some work around my “life values” and exploring why they matter to me. Perhaps I’m being too honest in writing about this.

For me being truthful has always been non-negotiable. I can still remember, aged 10ish, being infuriated when I tagged First XV member, Tim, in a game of British Bulldogs at school, and he refused to be caught because I think he saw me as one of the less sporty kids.

Equally, I’ve not forgotten my initial shock to hear that one of my contemporaries – a friend indeed – had claimed he secured a 2:1 in his degree when he actually achieved a 2:2. Whatever his motivations – job, pride, parental approval – he basically cheated.

There are those that would no doubt say to me that everyone tells the odd ‘little white lie’, and that’s probably true, myself included. But I’m not sure that everyone shares the same definition of ‘little white’ from ‘big black’.

There are also those who would tell me I need to lighten up a bit and not worry about truth and honesty so much. But it’s not going to happen because, as we’ve established, it’s one of my core values.

I cannot, therefore, escape my concern that truth is a value that is under threat.

This week, not for the first time, we discovered that the Chancellor’s LinkedIn profile contained ‘inaccuracies’. Last time round these were passed off as editorial errors made by an assistant. Maybe, but if you claim on more than one occasion in a speech that you spent, “the best part of a decade as an economist at the Bank of England”, when your total tenure was 5 years 7 months, you’re simply telling porkies.

The result? The full support of her boss.

Perhaps this is unsurprising when the purported Leader of the Free World claims he won the 2020 Presidential Election, has a social media platform called Truth Social and coined the term “fake nooze” despite being a master of mendacity…allegedly.

The result? He won the 2024 Presidential Election.

“Get over it, George!” I hear you say. But I won’t and I think we should all be concerned about the debasement of truth as a currency.

In business and finance truth and honesty remain fundamental. You break the rules and get caught; you may end up behind bars. But what if that wasn’t the case? What then?

In this context the combination of a political class that erodes truth as a value with the potential for technology to create alternative realities, should I think concern us all. Deepfakes of things like the Pope wearing a puffer jacket are funny, but what they portend may be no laughing matter.

If you can’t trust the numbers, truth be told, I don’t know where it ends.