The recent Walmart Blog Disclosure "scandals" in the PR industry involved the issues of disclosure and transparency.

Both issues are key in developing and maintaining trust.

But how transparent should we be or even want to be?

We all cherish and are entitled to our privacy. We have a right, even a duty to protect our personal interests. We also have the obligation to protect our employer’s confidential information. Yet we often also have some obligations to be transparent.

When should we disclose and when should we be discreet? Making such a decision can be complex.

Answering the following questions could be helpful.

1. Do we have the right to disclose? Do we own the information or does it belong to someone else? Personally, I never had a problem keeping a secret because information that is given to me in confidence does not belong to me. If I dispose of it, I am disposing of something that is not mine. Disposing of something that is not yours is a form of theft.
2. Is the recipient of the information I am considering disclosing entitled to the information? The press works on the premise that the public has the right to know. Is it always true?
3. By disclosing or not disclosing, are we being deceptive? In our attempt to protect our interest we should avoid using deception. Deception intentionally leads someone to believe something that is not true and it is done most often to obtain personal or corporate gains.
4. Are we leading others to take action that, if given the facts, they would not take?
5. Would such action be detrimental to their well-being?

The topic of the ethics of disclosure is very well addressed by Learnwell a California nonprofit public benefit corporation. 

In ethics, one of the worse case scenarios is NOT to ask questions. Asking questions does not mean of course that we will always have the “right” answer. We may, with 20/20 hindsight, discover that we took the wrong course but at least we have the comfort of knowing that we were thoughtful and considered the ethical dimension of our decisions.

As Solomon Ibn Gabriol said:

A wise man's question contains half the answer.