TRUTH AMONG FRIENDS

In the heat of a moment, the urge to establish rapport can prompt any of us to say something we don't really mean. Often such comments seem benign: Claiming to share a taste in musicians, authors, designers or sports teams, for example, rarely results in a flat-out battle if it's later discovered that in fact your tastes lie elsewhere.

Too many people simply don't know when to stop stretching the truth, though. It's one thing to say that you're crazy about Justin Timberlake when in reality you'd rather be home listening to the latest CD by acoustical guitarists Rodrigo y Gabriela (with Bonus DVD), but quite another to claim that you've worked some place you haven't or graduated from some school you didn't in order to win favor with someone.

All too often, even when we're not sure that others are stretching the truth to engage us, we find ourselves suspecting that they are.

"I have a friend who says that she is a graduate of the same community college I graduated from," one of my readers writes. "I was going to ask her if she would be interested in opening a small business with me until someone told me that she lied."

According to a mutual acquaintance, my reader's friend never graduated from the community college, having dropped out after completing only two classes.

At present it's one person's word against another's, but my reader is torn, unsure whether her friend lied but unwilling to go forward without knowing. She wants to know if it would be unethical for her to ask the school if her friend really did complete a degree there, and whether she could do this anonymously.

There is no ethical reason why she shouldn't look into the question, as long as her methods of inquiry are legitimate. Many colleges publish lists of their alumni, often online, for reference by their graduates. My reader could start by checking to see if such a list is available on line and, if it is, find out from it what she wants to know.

If such a list isn't available, it's equally acceptable for my reader to call the college for a reference check on her friend. Most institutions will readily confirm the dates that a given graduate attended and the degree he or she received.

She should, however, identify herself if she makes such inquiries. There are occasions when withholding your name is ethically acceptable -- when reporting a crime, for example -- but this isn't one of them.

It wouldn't be necessary to go into detail about why she wants to know, but to place the call anonymously would not only call into question her motives -- which, since she is considering going into business with her friend, are entirely reasonable -- but also might prevent her from getting access to the information she wants, since without identifying herself she couldn't prove that she herself is a graduate.

What complicates matters, however, is that my reader's idea for a new business doesn't require a college degree or anything of that nature.

"I don't care about my friend's degree," she writes. "It is the lying that bothers me."

That being the case, the ethics of checking up on her friend's background aren't really the point. If what really bothers my reader is the suspicion that her friend may have lied, going behind her back to sniff out the facts won't really solve anything. She may not be able to find the information she wants and, even if she can confirm that her friend didn't graduate, she won't know what may be behind the lie.

If my reader really wants to know if her friend has lied about receiving a degree, the right thing for her to do is to ask the friend directly. If she wants to check up on her friend's credentials at the community college, she should tell her friend that she is going to do so.

Either her friend was telling the truth or she was not. In either case, there is absolutely no reason for my reader to let her fear of the truth get in the way of her honesty.