Confessing sucks, but not confessing sucks even more
A reporter stands and asks a famous person a question related to alleged wrongdoing. The exchange is filmed and available for all the world to see. Would it make sense for the questioner to be careless in her response? No. This is serious business and she is on record.
She answers the question with an affirmation of her willingness to cooperate fully and providing information she has about the scandal at hand. When the inevitable follow up question is raised, asking more specifically about when she would share the information requested of her, she denies that she ever said she would cooperate.
The reporter, stunned, replies, “But Madam, you JUST said you would cooperate fully by doing such-and-so.” (I will leave the specifics out to protect the guilty.)
She replies, “I did not.”
“Yes you did!” shouts the crowd. As expected, this exchange is played on all the major networks over and over. She looks ridiculous. She looks bad. She even looks a bit unhinged.
The human brain is wired for survival and it will go to great lengths to do so. This includes stubborn resistance to admitting wrongdoing. Acknowledging that we have done wrong can cost us relationships, jobs, financial security and really punch our pride in the face.
But wait a second - NOT acknowledging wrongdoing eventually guarantees that same outcome without the added goodwill and clean conscious that admitting our wrongdoing may have provided. Failing to admit wrongdoing compounds the problem. It turns a mistake into a cover-up, a human failing into the possibility that our character will be judged deficient.
The courage it takes to tell the truth is significant but the potential for future payoff is grand. It teaches us that our shame lies. We learn that we are not alone in our weaknesses. We discover that acknowledgement is restorative. It does cost us our secrets. But failure to acknowledge the truth about ourselves can bankrupt us physically, emotionally and spiritually.
Our wrongdoing is rarely a secret. Somebody knows. In the example above, the evidence was gathered. Technically, her cooperation was not needed to prove her wrongdoing. Her unwillingness to acknowledge her mistake will ultimately cost her more because she will now be judged for her lack of remorse and her arrogance. Plus, people made a bunch of memes about the exchange and now she is the punchline of jokes.
