Too little
Call every promise “money raised” and let the audience infer that it is available.
Candor
Describe a shared problem plainly instead of protecting a reassuring story.
Readiness to state relevant truth plainly when concealment would be easier.
Candor puts relevant truth into clear words when concealment would be easier. Shared work depends on knowing where things stand: what arrived, what failed and what remains uncertain. A plain account gives others something they can use, including when the account disappoints them.
Try a practice
What Candor means in shared life
The fundraiser’s display shows a splendid tower of promised donations. The money received would make a much shorter tower. You separate the two piles before presenting the result. The chart has lost several floors, but the group can now decide what it can actually buy.
Candor gives…
People can revise a plan while revision still matters. Naming a shortfall early may prevent more effort being spent on a promise that has no practical support.
Finding the balance
A fitting response
Distinguish received funds, pledges and uncertainty in a short account.
Pursued too far
Publish donors’ private circumstances as proof that you are hiding nothing.
Relevance sets the scope. The group needs an accurate account of available resources; that does not entitle it to every person’s private story.
In ordinary life
An unfinished task
Say which part is done and which part needs help, rather than reporting that everything is progressing.
An inconvenient count
Keep the same definition of attendance when the new total is lower.
Nearby virtues, different work
Integrity
Integrity follows the commitment through action; Candor makes the inconvenient state of affairs intelligible.
Diligence
Diligence checks the account so that plain speaking carries accurate information.
Recognizing a counterfeit
A counterfeit of Candor: Theatrical bluntness delivers a cutting judgment while leaving the facts vague. Make the problem clearer, rather than merely making the speaker sound severe.
How to cultivate Candor
- Separate what is known from what is expected.
- Replace one reassuring abstraction with a concrete fact.
- Give the audience enough context to understand the significance.
Try it today
In a shared task, give a brief progress update: what is complete, what remains and what you do not yet know. Keep private information out of it and choose an appropriate recipient.
Questions worth returning to
- What assumption would a listener draw from my wording?
- Have I named the fact that changes the next decision?
Choose your practice
The situations on these pages are illustrative. These pages offer ideas for reflection and character practice, not professional advice. Choose practices suited to your circumstances and abilities. You may adapt, pause, or skip an exercise; putting yourself or someone else at risk is not proof of virtue.
About these practicesQuotations and further reading
Read these passages in their original settings through the source links.
For it is only a few out of many that venture to speak plainly to their friends rather than gratify them, and even among those few you will not easily find any who know how to do so properly, for they think they are outspoken when they abuse and scold.
Plutarch, Morals: Ethical Essays
How one may discern a flatterer from a friend.;
Greek; English translation by A. R. ShilletoPlain speaking loses its value when it becomes scolding. Plutarch addresses correction among friends.
And for whatever purposes silence may be equal to gold, it cannot be safely taken as an indication of specific ideas.
Theophrastus (fictional narrator), in George Eliot, Impressions of Theophrastus Such
IV. A Man Surprised At His Originality.Silence does not tell listeners which specific ideas a person holds; assumed agreement can mislead a group.
Can we, by any effort of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were true, believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars?
William James, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
The Will to Believe, section IIJames tests wishful belief against an ordinary sum of money. A desirable total is not an accurate account.
We know, at last, that we can only discover truth by a rational and democratic interest in life, and to give truth complete social expression is the endeavor upon which we are entering.
Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics
Chapter I — IntroductionAddams links truth’s social expression to an active interest in human experience, rather than a reassuring abstraction.
People in olden times were loth to speak out, fearing the disgrace of not being themselves as good as their words.
Confucius, The Analects of Confucius
Book Iv;
Chinese; English translation by William JenningsConfucius links speech to what people can stand behind in action. A campaign’s reassuring account should remain answerable to what has actually happened.
concealment consists in trying for your own profit to keep others from finding out something that you know, when it is for their interest to know it.
Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Officiis
BOOK III THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND THE EXPEDIENT; section 56;
Latin; English translation by Walter MillerCicero focuses on withholding what another person has an interest in knowing, the distinction between received funds and pledges.
therefore, always when thou changest thine opinion or course, profess it plainly, and declare it, together with the reasons that move thee to change, and do not think to steal it.
Francis Bacon, Essays
ESSAYS.; XI.—OF GREAT PLACE.129Bacon asks a changed course to be declared with its reasons, making candor practical for a group revising its plan.
Continue through the catalog
Practice this collection
Choose this approved collection as an optional workbook program, or select individual virtues in My Virtues.