So, while transparency is good, we all have to recognize that it’s not universally or even innately good. Some considerations for living in a transparent world include:
- Recognize the difference between transparency and disclosure. Disclosure involves telling you things required by law in ways that may be technically accurate but contextually ambiguous. Think of food labeling, automobile history, safety information etc.
- Know the bias in the information. All information is biased, because without bias it has no context and therefore means less. Know the author, their intent, their goals, the financial aspects of the information and you can understand and use transparency better.
- Question what you do not see as often the pieces missing tell you more than the blizzard of information people are providing. When companies, individuals or the media hammer on a single point, or single issue – look even harder for what they do not want to talk about or what they want to keep away from your attention. This is the other side of the ‘protest too much’ of transparency.
- Ask, ‘what am I supposed to do with this information’ in order gain greater insight into its value, motivation and bias. Simply dumping data without an intended or implied purpose is a garbage out strategy.
Everyone wants greater transparency, the want to see what is going on and for good reason. Transparency provides companies, products and services with a degree of ‘trust’ but that trust comes at a price. Transparency has not, nor was it ever intended to pre-empt people from making poor decisions. People do that using information and not assuming transparency creates altruism.