“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive.” Sort of a pity isn't it? A modern-day translation of that might read, “If you're going tell somebody a lie, you better have a good memory.” Misrepresenting the facts in some cases is not considered to be a lie. Ask any politician. Our contemporary society has made a mockery of truth-telling at the political level. Lawyers make their living determining what is true according to the law.

Nonetheless, there is still a great deal of value to be placed on an individual who doesn't know how to tell an untruth. But there is also a price to pay for being totally truthful. If you saw the movie Liar Liar in which a lawyer played by Jim Carrey was cursed to tell the truth all day long, you have already seen just how bad things can get when speaking exactly what's on your mind. Paradoxically, our society also seems to place a premium on people who tell it like it is. Which way is it going to be?

A more pointed question might be: Which way is it going to be for you, or for your fire department? As a private person you have a lot of ability to maneuver your dialogue and conversation with family and friends. Most people engage in a social behavior known as misdirection when dealing with family and friends. It's not exactly lying. Sometimes a person may not speak exactly what's on his mind. He says something that is evasive or ambiguous. A good example is a joke that we often see on TV sitcoms in which a hapless husband is confronted by his wife with the question, “Does this dress make me look fat?” By the same token, that question can be reversed when husband asks his wife, “Do you think I'm going bald?”

When faced with similar circumstances, you may do the same as the TV character. You tell a white lie. You know the answer, but if you tell the truth it's likely to result in an eruption. Under those circumstances telling a little white lie is probably called for.

But in the firehouse, misrepresentation of facts can get you into a lot of trouble in a big hurry. I'm not talking about the small-scale social interaction around the dinner table. I'm talking about dealing with serious events that transpire when the truth is sacrificed to protect individuals from accountability.

Recently there was a lot of information put on the Internet by fire service professionals dealing with a situation where inappropriate firehouse behavior initially went unreported. When discovered, the inappropriate behavior was then misrepresented by officers who bore witness to those events. Eventually the investigation resulted in the facts coming out. Entire careers were shattered by not telling the truth.

I'm not going to discuss the specifics of any of these cases. I'm not privileged to know the details of each of these events in order to make a judgment of the totality of the infraction. But I would like to deal with an element of truthfulness as a character trait of fire officers.

In the context of managing a fire department, fire station or a specific program within a department, individuals often are confronted with circumstances where things have gone wrong. And that is our departure point for discussion. What I am about to dis cuss isn't that you have to maneuver facts when you are dealing with interpersonal relationships, but rather that when something occurs in which there is causation, where discipline is called for and a fault must be determined, you must be prepared to follow the concept sworn in courtrooms day in and day out: “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

This can be a gut-wrenching experience. Living up to the element of truthfulness in an organization can literally be a career-rendering experience. Failing to meet the trust of truthfulness can also be a career-rendering event, but more often than not it's of greater negative consequence than telling the truth.

Let me draw another line in the sand. I fully realize that people might have a hard time discriminating between when to tell the truth and when not to when it comes to protecting other people's egos. I'm not talking about that. What I am talking about is when you must tell the truth to protect your own or your organization's interests. The operative word is “cover-up.”

It's human nature to attempt to divert attention from things that we are unhappy or dissatisfied with. All you have to do is look at the children's TV shows on almost any weekend and you will find one or more scenes in which a child has done something wrong and points the finger to a sibling or friend to say, “It wasn't me!”

There are a million scenarios in which a cover-up can be generated. Again, I hesitate to note specifics from real situations, but in my lifetime as a fire officer I have run into many of them. Cover-ups almost always result from an event gyrating out of control because individuals are unwilling to face the facts and personnel want to make it all go away.

When people anticipate serious, outright negative consequences from reporting the truth, they often will engage in elaborate schemes to divert attention away from themselves or guilty parties in hope that the problem will simply wither over time. The fact is that hardly ever happens. More often the scenario becomes uglier and uglier as people who are investigating the event begin to realize that there are inconsistencies and gaps in the explanation. When these gaps are generated by those who won't tell the whole story because they don't want to tell the truth, it gets real complicated.

You readers know that I am not a lawyer. I am not trying to suggest in the context of this column that there aren't times when you should keep your mouth shut for a very good reason. I am not suggesting that we throw out the Fifth Amendment: No one should be forced to self-incriminate. What I am suggesting is that if you're a witness to an event, you are not an accomplice as long as you do everything in your power to tell the truth about that event. The key word is “witness.” Truthfulness for the fire officer has to with our sense of responsibility to ensure that the organizational values are upheld.

This issue has two faces. If we tell the truth, we have a right to expect that our subordinates will reciprocate. Therefore, one of the most important aspects of creating this character attribute in an organization is to walk our own talk. If we obtain a reputation of discrediting the truth, how can we possibly expect other individuals to rise to the occasion when requested?

Where misrepresentation sometimes plays itself out is in the court of public opinion. I once took a “Reporting Public Affairs” class in the university as part of my minor in journalism. In that course my professor told me that people with roles that have a public image should never lie or bluff, and if they don't know the answer they should keep their mouths shut. I have considered it to be good advice over many years.

Interestingly enough, in that same class we had a guest speaker who came and spoke to us for almost three hours on the integrity of being an elected official. Less than six months later he was indicted by the grand jury for perjury, and as far as I know he went to prison and stayed there for a long time. In retrospect, he wasn't a credible person to give that lecture, yet what happened to him positively reinforced what my professor said about being truthful as you represent the public interest.

This concept starts to bleed over into other areas of the fire service that are probably a little controversial. Our profession has a long and deeply rooted tradition of taking care of each other. I am not going to use the clichés that are often used to describe this attribute, but you probably know exactly what I'm speaking of. It is the desire of everyone in the fire service to try to stop any negative story from emerging beyond the walls of the firehouse if we can prevent it. We try to take care of our problems in house, so to speak. The problem with that tradition is that in our contemporary society nothing remains a secret very long. No matter how thick we lay on the whitewash, it is almost a transparent film by the time it is revealed to the public or to others in responsible roles.

I have collected about 35 different scenarios from the Internet that deal with situations in which fire officers have not told the truth at the outset of the event. I am talking specifically about telling untruths in an attempt to prevent the situation from undergoing a higher level of public scrutiny. In every case it didn't work, and the people who tried to cover up the situation were harmed, as were those who created the situation.

I'm not suggesting that a party who has committed an act that is subject to scrutiny give up the rights to protect against self-incrimination. I am talking about those who know about the event and then misrepresent the facts to make the event seem harmless or to make it go away. It's the actions of these individuals that often make the event's seriousness seem much more palpable.

So there you have it. If you must tell a little white lie to maintain a balance in a personal relationship with someone who is your equal or someone whose trust you wish to retain, then feel free to do so as long as you don't cross over the line of being mischievous with that information. In the event that you are confronted with a set of circumstances in which you are being requested to bear witness, it is time to learn the significance of telling the whole truth.

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With more than 40 years in the fire service, Ronny J. Coleman has served as fire chief in Fullerton and San Clemente, Calif., and was the fire marshal of the State of California from 1992 to 1999. He is a certified fire chief and a master instructor in the California Fire Service Training and Education System. A Fellow of the Institution of Fire Engineers, he has an associate's degree in fire science, a bachelor's degree in political science and a master's degree in vocational education.