I was going to give truth, or our increasing lack thereof, a break from my blog this week. And then this happened…

Last week (two days after my “End of Truth” blog), USA Today and other major media outlets reported that Yahoo’s recently hired CEO Scott Thompson had lied on his resume about having a degree in computer science. He doesn’t.

Thompson has a degree in accounting. Which strikes me as funny. Would you trust an accountant who lies? Maybe — if you’re a gambler who is willing to lie on your taxes or dodge an audit. But if I were a Yahoo shareholder, I wouldn’t want my company run by a liar. If it’s OK for Thompson to be unethical on his resume, where else may he decide it’s OK to be unethical?

Scott Thompson was found out on May 3. A shareholder, who has been characterized as “disgruntled,” accused Thompson of the indiscretion. Turns out he was right. But Thompson downplayed it. Yahoo downplayed. Then the story got a little media traction.

The shareholder, Daniel Loeb, said that Thompson’s lie breached Yahoo’s code of ethics. Do ya think? Unless they explicitly left lying out of their ethics code. Yahoo down played the incident as an “inadvertent distortion” and stood behind their new CEO. When’s the last time you inadvertently distorted a B.Sc. or PhD on your resume? I know, they’re such common typos — it could happen to anyone.

It would appear that lying has been now officially accepted in the corporate world. Not that corporate deception hasn’t gone on forever. But it’s not the lying that has me concerned. That would be naïve. It’s the lack of outrage over it.

We have become so accustomed to lies that we’re now unfazed by these types of revelations. Yahoo is a primary web information source. If the CEO can lie on his resume, what else does the company think it’s OK to lie about? And why do we NOT CARE?

We should be outraged — at this lie, at bigger lies, at corporate and government lies, at lies that are told in the office and in our personal life. With every acceptance of every lie, we erode the value of the truth. And with that, we are eroding the very core of our society. If lies are acceptable and truth is nebulous at best, then what the hell is real?

This lie may not seem big, but it’s the casual acceptance of it that outrages me. And with a media that is so ready to editorialize the news, it’s even more shocking how they are letting this one roll by. Remember when Watergate was a big deal? Now it’s been “lexicon-ed” down to a crisis catch phrase. This one will undoubtedly be known around Yahoo as “Resume-gate”.

So, please, be outraged and channel it into defending the truth. Let’s talk, tweet, blog, Facebook and text about the truth. Demand it. Hold people accountable.

Because once lies are completely status quo, we’re screwed. And we all deserve better than that.

~ Mo Douglas

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