Everyday Ethics

Most people will agree that there is something wrong with lying, and some would go so far as to claim that you should never lie, even when doing so will protect another person from harm.  But misrepresentation is often another story altogether.  Those who view lying as clearly wrong will nonetheless misrepresent themselves to others, either by deliberately embellishing their own credentials in order to achieve some goal, or by failing to correct errors that others make regarding their qualifications.  Before we consider whether this type of dishonesty is any less harmful than lying, we ought to try to get a bit clearer about what the distinction actually is.

A solid working definition of lying is the telling of deliberate falsehoods.  Both active and passive lies qualify as lies if there is intent to consciously mislead.  This is distinct from misrepresentation, which we will roughly define as unintentional telling of falsehoods.  This line is obviously going to be a bit blurry.  For example, if I am caught doing something I should not be doing, and I explain myself by giving some fictional account of my actions, this is lying.  If I am asked in a job interview if I am proficient at Microsoft Excel, I might say yes because I want the job, even though I’m unclear about what qualifies as being proficient.  Misrepresentation is distinct from lying because it is an embellishment of true facts, which partially explains its morally uncertain status.

We have all been in these sorts of situations before, where we are asked if we know about some piece of information or possess some skill, and we answer affirmatively despite being uncertain if we ought to.  We misrepresent our own knowledge and abilities not out of malicious intent to deceive, or even out of pure self-preservation, but because we are unsure if we ought to say “yes I can do that” or “no, I’m not familiar with that,” so we err on the side of our own advantage.  This is perfectly natural, and it’s not exactly the same as lying because it does have at least one foothold in truth.  Despite this, there are some good reasons for avoiding misrepresenting yourself whenever possible.

First, even if there is no malicious intent on our part, the person to whom we misrepresent ourselves is bound to feel deceived.  If your boss asks you about your Excel proficiency and you claim to know how to use the program well, he or she is likely to feel misled when you are unable to complete what they consider to be a remedial task.  You may be disciplined as a result, but the significant ethical point is that you will have caused harm to another person unnecessarily.

Next, misrepresentation is something of a “gateway drug” to outright lying.  After all, if you have managed to enhance your standing by either singing your own praises, beyond what is justified, or by failing to correct excessively lofty assessments of your ability, you have probably gotten comfortable with a certain level of personal dishonesty.  Children are disciplined for “little white lies,” because we don’t want them to get the impression that lying is acceptable.  There is no reason to think that the same would not be true of adults.

Finally, misrepresentation carries the potential to put others in unfair positions.  For example, if you and several of your coworkers are assigned to a project based on your abilities and knowledge in some key area, and you are not as qualified as your superiors believe you to be, everyone else must now either do your work for you, or reveal that you don’t know what you’re doing.  Either way, they have been placed in a compromised and unfair position that can easily be avoided if you are simply forthright about what you are and are not capable of.

We have tried to focus on the negative impact of misrepresentation upon others, rather than on harm to the misrepresenting individual.  This is not to say that misrepresentation is not personally harmful in some cases.  The important point for our purposes is that in addition to being potentially bad for you, it is also harmful to others.  Although misrepresentation is not lying, exactly, it is not entirely honest either.  But this confusion need not be settled in order to determine what we ought to do.  Our ethical obligation to avoid causing undue harm to others is enough to entail that we ought to avoid misrepresenting ourselves as much as possible.

About the Author

Elijah Weber is a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He holds a Master's degree in philosophy from Colorado State University, and Bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy from Chapman Univerity. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Laura, his son Brandon, age two and a half, and two cats, both of whom are mentally deranged.