Discretion

I write all the time about the benefits of sharing our thoughts and insights with each other. Thinking harder, writing better, and sharing more is my mantra. But there are many times when the stories we want to share involve other people and it is not always easy to decide if and how to share those stories.

Having spent the weekend with my parents there are lots of potential topics swirling around my head. They involve both the good and the bad of family relationships and what those have to teach us about ourselves and our ways of dealing with the world. In some respects these are the very topics that potentially offer the greatest learning, both for ourselves and for others.

But these topics touch on other people’s feelings and identities and to share them would have an impact on our relationships. It would also be a one sided perspective on situations with little opportunity for rebuttal.

The same is true of working with clients. There are many, many times that I am presented with situations which I am dying to blog about that would reveal really important stuff about the workplace. But I decide not to. It feels “unfair”, breaking an implicit trust, being indiscrete to my advantage and their disadvantage.

This is one of the hardest challenges of blogging and one about which there are no easy answers. We all have to work out where our own lines are drawn and when to be brave and when to be discrete.