Recently I was instructed to lie to a client.
The Problem
This wasn’t some cloak-and-dagger affair.
I wasn’t taken to one side and spoken to in hushed tones.
It was said to me, as if I was the idiot, with an implicit acceptance that lies were just good business, with an open, casual disregard for their negative consequences on the outcomes, our relationship with the client and for the users. If anything they seemed put out and disappointed that I was making such an unprofessional fuss.
This made me angry. It stood against my beliefs, everything I’ve learned is bad in the world, the company’s published standards and cultural messaging. And yet it was present in every project.
I immediately challenged this and said “I will not lie to a client!”.
The person telling me fell back on that classic coping mechanism - cognitive dissonance - to justify this action and said “I don’t see it as lying. I’m simply solving a problem”. And here we see a very common form of gaslighting.
I thought I could reason with them. I thought “this is so obvious and so bad that perhaps if I just point out this mistake they will realise” - I strongly advised the manager not to lie because this would cause long term, irreparable damage to the client, their users and the public which they serve. More transparent logical fallacy justifications followed.
I was clear again that “I will not lie to the client”.
Though the words were not said, the implication was that I was being disloyal to the company and I obviously didn’t understand this ‘normal’ behaviour. I was challenged to re-examine my clearly misaligned morals and values because I wasn’t putting the company’s reputation above the outcomes we were asked to deliver or my own professional integrity, or just simple common sense.
Up against such brainwashed neurotypicals, operating on system 2 thinking, misaligned project KPIs and willing to casually disregard their integrity due to an obvious minimum moral value, autistics can only make their point, warn of the obvious outcomes and then leave the conversation when it’s all too much.
Not only is it a logical fallacy and morally wrong, but you cannot casually insist that an autistic lie on your behalf. You shouldn’t ask anyone to. It leads to massive moral conflict and anxiety for the autistic person involved.
You may not like it but we will not lie for you!
Something breaks inside when we do.
We are pathologically honest…and that’s a good thing.
I was clear that I would not be speaking with the client if this was going to be their approach, as the truth would achieve much more than these lies and this approach was totally unethical. Once again they brushed over my concerns and treated my like I was the one being unreasonable.
So finally I was crystal clear
“I will not be attending the meeting. I will not lie to the client and if you include me in the meeting I will tell the client the truth! What you are doing is wrong and it is against the principles we espouse as an organisation!”.
This was an awkward situation for them because I am the lead expert in my work and on this project, however, true to astoundingly predictable neurotypical behaviour, they said one thing publicly and then did another when it came to it. They decided they would try to go ahead without my input as I clearly wasn’t ‘a team player’.
This is what all companies do (do not think for a minute it is just my project or organisation). This is ‘normal’ business, or perhaps I should say ‘neurotypical’ business.
The root cause of this?
They had offered the client easy, ignorant, greedy lies to get the work in the first place, and now that they were under the microscope to deliver on their promises the truth was proving rather inconvenient, so the quick, simple solution was to “lie some more” and then obfuscate the remaining truth and blame others when they were ultimately discovered.
All of this is exhausting and unnecessary. People want honesty, even if it makes them mad at first. Because that means the problem is out in the open, to be fixed properly and it won’t happen again because the learnings are there for all to see. It also means that they can trust you and trust is a rare and valuable commodity. One that autistics value. It makes us targets for deception but it makes us reliable too.
But when you lie, the only people who learn anything are the people you have lied to. Sure, they may not be able to pin the crime on you with irrefutable evidence, but they know you did it and they will not be coming back to you for more ‘help’. Your reputation will be soiled and you will repeat the same mistakes again next time because greed, laziness and dishonesty were rewarded within your organisation, not punished and no one learned anything from the experience. Except for the autistic staff - they learned that they work for ‘bad people’ who cannot be trusted.
I see this behaviour again and again and again in neurotypicals without exception. They seem to have normalised it so much that no one even thinks to challenge this positively spun apathy-upon-lies approach. How can things ever get better if no one will change their thoughts, let alone their behaviours?
Autistics are pathologically honest.
That’s not to say we don’t learn that a white lie is useful sometimes, it’s just that lying makes us very uncomfortable logically and emotionally. The truth will always, ultimately, fix a problem (or prevent one) and make the world a better place, if people take the time to listen and are willing to consider the facts (not simply selectively twist them for their own short term gains).
The psychology of neurotypicals
The psychology of neurotypicals is also hard at work here, creating the perfect storm: the tendency for many people to stick to their beliefs in the face of any amount of evidence to the contrary, no matter how overwhelming. I see all too often - anchoring bias, the Ikea effect, confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance - neurological defects designed to make the disastrous outcomes of greedy, lazy assumptions more palatable, not less likely.
Don’t ask an autistic to lie
So don’t ask an autistic to lie, because you’ll either get the painful truth or you’ll cause them psychologically harm when you try to give them no choice. There’s probably a law suit in there either way
#autismawarenessmonth #autopia #autism #actuallyautistic