Transparency is simply shared honesty

Honesty is the easiest way to live a productive life. The alternative is hiding things, or covering up a small mistake until it grows into a large one. Transparency is simply shared honesty, practiced where other people can see it.

A lack of transparency can work for a while. I believe it always festers, and that it makes life harder when the truth finally surfaces, however long that takes.

I learned this was more than a philosophy when it happened to me.

Early in my career, a caring colleague suggested something I had never considered. She told me that Utah's Government Records Access and Management Act, which most of us call GRAMA, would let me see how my own workload and salary compared with others in my department.

I arranged to review the records. What I found were glaring differences in workload, in compensation, and in pay between the men and the women doing the same work.

That information changed what I was able to do. I took it to the person who ran our department, and rather than getting defensive, that person took it up the chain with me and helped me make the case to people who could act on it. None of that would have been possible with a feeling or a suspicion.

I would not have known any of it without a public records law and a colleague willing to mention it.

People tend to file transparency under good government, somewhere near reporters and watchdogs. I would file it closer to home. It is a tool an ordinary person can pick up on a Tuesday afternoon when something feels wrong and she wants to find out whether it is.

I would not call it a grand principle. I would call it the reason I knew something I would otherwise still not know.