THE LIES WE TELL OURSELVES: The Transparency Fallacy
Provocative title No?
Our lives are full of lies, white ones, blatant ones designed to deceive, lies by omission….. They are it seems, a part of the human condition. Kant believed that they are always morally wrong but that perhaps is a discussion beyond my paygrade and certainly for another time. What should concern us more are those lies we tell ourselves, those that justify our actions, our positions and our beliefs. You may know of this as Cognitive Dissonance.
In the coffee industry we see this when our actions don’t match up with our statements. Diversity, Inclusivity, sustainability, workers rights; look at virtually any part of our industry and you’ll see this disconnect. I hope that this will be a series of posts where guest writers will unpack these topics and more, but first I want to talk about the fallacy of transparency.
Transparency? A fallacy? Really, we’re going there? Yup, it may be the perfect example to be honest.
Lets try a thought experiment. Think of how many coffee companies you know that talk about their transparency. Now remove those who don’t explicitly talk about transparency in their green coffee buying.
Now remove those who don’t give evidence, farmgate/fob pricing, raw data or a link to a recognised program...Now remove those who don’t share data about their business, Financial breakdowns, P&L etc…
Got many left? I thought not.
Through this lens “transparency” is the lie we tell ourselves that justifies what we have and what we are willing to pay for the raw product.
It tells us that we pay a fair price to the producers.
That it’s okay for the producing end to bear the burden of fiscal transparency.
That it’s okay for the wealth to accumulate in the middle of the value stream
That it’s okay for the value we capture to fund expensive build outs
That because we are transparent, we are an ethical company/industry.
We don’t act as we should because we are comfortable with this dissonance. And yes, I’m saying ‘we’ as this is a problem for the whole industry to address and one we collectively lie to ourselves about, even though there are those who work against it.
What I don’t have is a simple answer and I’m certainly not saying that transparency is inherently flawed or not an admirable goal, but something is amiss. Is there an industry that we can look to for inspiration? Perhaps but there are already many in our own industry who are working tirelessly to create systems that benefit the producers, the inspiration should come from within.
Mat North