Transparency vs Need to Know

This is a question that's been festering in my head ever since that Wikileaks story surfaced in the media. For the record, I don't think the story is about:

• US foreign policy
• Access to data laws that may have been broken
• Domestic terrorism or national security
• The ego maniacal nature of the Wikileaks founder
• What any other country thinks of the data revealed
• The technical nature of how the data was accessed
  

For me, this is a tug of war between the need for greater levels of transparency in government and large organizations, and the understanding that some things are not intended for a wider audience. It's the geopolitical equivalent of parenting. On one hand, there's what we really think of our kid's performance on the field, in the class or wherever...these are thoughts that rarely leave our mouths. On the other hand, there's what we say to insure that our words are positively reinforcing, and don't cut down the kid's ego. Wikileaks parallels this to me, except that both voices are actually heard and laid down for the record on a governmental scale.

Should an ambassador be allowed to give an unvarnished, un-spun version of how they see another country or situation, knowing its intended for purely internal use...yes of course. Should a government be allowed to make important decisions and not disclose those, as they may be unpopular ...probably not.

But the context of the Wikileaks situations brings this into sharper and more pressing focus. Should a third party organization be in a position to expose all information they lay their hands on, in the public interest..? Well that's an interesting one. No right has been given to them to do this by the public, nor was the public asking for this depth of information. And government's certainly aren't happy about having their pants pulled down in public.

But there's a silver lining here I might suggest, even though we didn't know we needed one.

Knowing that we could be exposed, that our stock price might dip, that our popularity could sag in the event our "true" bad behaviors are revealed, that will help keep us in line a little. If we've lost our moral compass as a guiding principle, at least the fear of exposure will help keep things on the straight and narrow a little. This is clearly a stick rather than a carrot, but if as a society we don't elect to self-motivate ourselves into doing the right thing, perhaps there's a role for the wiki-leaks of the world.

This is a sad conclusion of course, and one we can fix by managing our companies the way we would want to be managed, and electing individuals to represent us that don't just tell us what we want to hear, but also tell us the hard truths we need to hear. I'm not sure that's a short term realistic expectation however, so we're back to relying on the Julian Assange's of the world.

Very sad indeed.