Career Advice: Tuesday Ethics Club: The case of obfuscated truth

Every Tuesday, an expert from The Ethics Centre offers advice on ethical issues impacting public servants. This week’s question:“When appearing as a witness in, for example, a royal commission, is it ethical to adopt practices designed to obfuscate the truth? The common approach of avoiding telling the whole truth is giving answers such as ‘I don’t recall, I didn’t turn my mind to it, not to my knowledge’ along with the common supporting practice of being careful about note-taking, emails etc. This may be a protective practice encouraged by defence lawyers as the burden of proving an offence falls on the prosecutor. However as public servants testifying as public servants, should the legal strategy be about protecting themselves, their leaders or the government of the day or should it be about integrity, transparency and telling the whole truth?”

‍This comes to us via the Institute of Public Administration New Zealand IPANZ E-update.