Commentary

What Is Transparency?

by dave.b , Max Kalehoff , January 9, 2009

Wired editor and "The Long Tail" author Chris Anderson introduces the Conservation Law of Transparency -- meaning you can't be open in all things all the time. While that may be true, his argument subtly implies that transparency is an absolute. I'm not sure if that was intended, but it's a false and important assumption to address within an otherwise interesting concept.

Chris's explanation of the Law includes descriptions such as "truly transparent" and "true transparency." Even his phrase "can't be transparent about everything all the time" suggests one either IS or IS NOT absolutely transparent about certain things and not about others.

Here's the problem: unless your context is physics (i.e., the ability of light to travel through an object), transparency is largely subjective, and varies across groups and individuals. Social norms rarely exist that allow agreement on whether something is transparent or not. Sorry, life's messy.

Transparency has problems similar to its cousin, full disclosure, which was born in the halls of the SEC. It was intended as a regulatory guarantee that a company's material news reached all stakeholders equitably, says my PR guru friend, Peter Himler. When applied liberally -- beyond a narrow, technical circumstance -- full disclosure and transparency fall victim to subjectivity, becoming nothing more than aspirations. Aspirations are noble, but NOT absolutes. I suppose you could be absolute in your commitment to an aspiration, though.

Also, Chris is wise to acknowledge the cost of transparency: "Transparency is hard work. Constantly updating the world on your status can become a job all by itself." Indeed, a full, absolute commitment to transparency in every aspect of one's life would be inefficient, and probably shut life down.

There's also a cost -- if not conflict -- associated with ethics and standards. For example, would it be wise for a returning soldier from Iraq to be completely transparent with his four-year-old son about what it's like to kill another man? Certainly not immediately, but perhaps when the child is older. Or, should a dinner guest be completely transparent about how disgusting the host's cooking is? I would argue no.

So, what is transparency, anyway? What do you think? In the circumstance, you have license to be brutally honest -- er, transparent -- with me.

commentary

9 comments about "What Is Transparency?".

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Douglas Ferguson from College of Charleston, January 9, 2009 at 11:18 a.m.
It usually means avoiding secrecy. All meetings are announced and public, with only personnel matters held private.
In this case, it's just jargon for full disclosure. People who insist on saying transparency to mean honesty in business affairs are typically the same twits who cannot resist injecting "at the end of the day" into their word stream (to create some totally new jargon, word stream, which may make me famous if it catches on).
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Russell Cross from Prentke Romich, January 9, 2009 at 11:42 a.m.

I'm with you on the "a full, absolute commitment to transparency in every aspect of one's life would be inefficient, and probably shut life down." Sometimes I get asked to make a quick decision at work and, once made, then get questions about <i>why</i> I chose X over Y. I am them expected to summarise the 30-years of learning and experience that have got me to the stage where I can make quick decisions.

If a decision takes 1 minute but the explanantion of why takes an hour (or more) that's not only inefficient but stupid.

Monica Bower from TERiX Computer Service, January 9, 2009 at 12:16 p.m.

Max: Dead on. The error is one of semantics. When we speak of transparency we're really talking about degrees of translucence.

And too often it turns into either cheerleading or blamestorming, rather than ensuring nothing is done in an environment of stealth for the benefit of yourself and your audience. The ethical questions arise when revealing an idea or decision too soon will generate so much backlash that that idea or decision will forever be weighed down, or at least deeply changed; if that's for the good, one needs to be the whistleblower but if it's for the bad, loose lips sink ships. Knowing the difference often requires the prophetic powers of Nostradamus, but after the fact everyone knows what you should have done :) .

Max Kalehoff from MAK, January 9, 2009 at 12:22 p.m.

Russell, you said it well: "If a decision takes 1 minute but the explanantion of why takes an hour (or more) that's not only inefficient but stupid."

Paula Lynn from Who Else Unlimited, January 9, 2009 at 12:31 p.m.

What a wonderful world it would be if there were only absolutes...or not. As I understand, the constitution was written secretively by men overdressed, stuffed into very closed quarters in very warm to hot weather with the windows and doors shut. Was it perfect, would more input would have made it more imperfect without the ability to apply the laws as changes occur, or did they forget things? Max, write and sign something, please. We need help.

Andrew Zeiger from SourceForge Inc, January 9, 2009 at 12:54 p.m.

This is great commentary. The works has been so caught up in being "open" that we have perhaps taken it too far. There are fantastic examples of hybrid models that are more efficient. Jboss for example, has an open project, as well as a derivative work, not truly open. This is so precisely due to the inefficiency those before me have so eloquently pointed out.
Even open media publishing icons place limits on being open. For example where the written word crosses the legal line. Open just isn't always better.

Joelle Kaufman from BloomReach, January 9, 2009 at 3:54 p.m.

Max - provocative column - especially in a world where individuals can be more transparent than realized with their Facebook, Twitter and other living histories.

In every sense of the word, transparency is subjective, and in the ad network world even more so. The all-to-frequent cases of brand ads popping up in unexpected – and undesirable – places confirm that transparency means different things to different people.

At Adify, transparency is a clear-cut aspiration –we aim to provide both our advertisers and publishers with as much information as possible about the advertising campaigns in which they participate. For advertisers this means a full site list and 24/7 real-time insight into campaign performance by site, ad space, ad type, and more. For publishers it means being able to review, accept, or reject all campaigns based on advertiser, pricing, and creative.

Transparency is a fundamentally subjective concept, but for those of us in the advertising world, it should be the customers’ viewpoint that matters.

Ted Rubin from The Rubin Organization / Return on Relationship, January 9, 2009 at 4:26 p.m.

No such thing as absolute transparency, since what you believe to be the absolute truth is subjective and coming from your viewpoint in many things, especially when it is applied to brands, products, business, life, love, sex, etc. Everything I guess :-)

David Cooperstein from Figurr, January 9, 2009 at 5:03 p.m.

By definition and by execution, Joelle and I agree. Transparency is defined by the data created, and in our case that means every impression, on every web site, for every campaign that runs on Burst Network.

But just as the article indicates, transparency is not always what is optimal if the goal is not branding but rather performance or some other measure of success.

Recognizing that not every situation demands or desires transparency, we can adjust the level of "see-through" based on what the advertiser needs, the publisher wants, and the ad network desires (if they are using our platform).

Transparency warrants adjustable boundaries, but you have to start at the fully open end of the spectrum in order to gray things out as requested.