While I laughed at Jim Carrey's antics and sympathized with his inability to tell even a little white lie to protect someone else's feelings, I thought about the application of the concept of truth-telling and other ethical expectations to organizational behavior.
Many professions have codes of ethics which provide guidelines for how they operate.
Somehow, like a Good Housekeeping seal of approval, the code of ethics may calm the uncertainty felt by clients when contracting for goods or services. Organizations ranging from the American Medical Association to the National Association of the Remodeling Industry publish codes which clearly state the tenets to which they profess to adhere. As I was reading just such a code, I was reminded of my drive across country a few years ago. On the second day of travel from California, I stopped in Arizona to put gas in the car. The too-kind man in the service station admonished me that the tread on my tires was so bare that the hot roads would cause me to have a blow out.