Perlow's work is part of Harvard Business Press' newly released Honesty at Work Collection, which includes her research into the organizational dynamics that stifle communication. She also wrote When You Say Yes But Mean No: How Silencing Conflict Wrecks Relationships and Companies ... and What You Can Do About It (Crown Business, 2003).

Her findings relate dramatically to the world of technology, where CIOs constantly need not only to communicate with partners in business and their employees, but also to listen and be willing to hear bad news. In this interview with contributing Web editor Howard Baldwin, she discusses the importance of being honest.

Q: Though we've been treated to a raft of corporate scandals recently, your research isn't about lying?

A: No, there's a line between being deceptive and withholding information without malice. What I've found is that people withhold their differences, believing it's in the best interest of getting the work done. But by doing so, they undermine the relationship they're trying to preserve and actually slow down the task they're trying to speed up.

Q: Is this more common in technology, with the stereotype of engineers who can't communicate?

A: No, it occurs across the board. Even so, it may be true that engineers can't communicate. But if you deal with issues when they're smaller, they don't have to become overwhelming later. In my research, I saw people avoid little things that didn't seem like a big deal at the time. It's not that they disagreed; it's just that they didn't communicate. They assumed they were on the same wavelength.

The bigger the differences are between the people trying to communicate, the more important it is to be clear. Make sure they understand where you're coming from, and vice versa. You have to realize you may be part of the problem. It's easy to blame the other person, but most of the research shows that bad bosses are rarer than we think. It's easier to think, "It's not me."

Q: What's the best way to lay the foundation for good communication?

A: When you're trying to build a relationship, especially with people who have different perspectives, it's very important to make sure you explain where you're coming from and learn where they're coming from. You don't have to agree, but you have to understand each other. When you don't achieve that mutual understanding, things fester, making it harder to deal with the issues later on. At the same time, when you don't deal with them, you're less innovative, less creative, and you make less-effective decisions. That slows you down and you feel even more time pressure, and then you're even less likely to deal with issues.

Q: So the problem just perpetuates itself?

A: That's right. If you'd dealt with little things early on, you'd have never gotten to this point. But it works the other way: If you communicate, you get better at communicating. I always say that you want to build a constructive spiral instead of a destructive spiral, a virtuous cycle instead of a vicious cycle.

Q: Are there pitfalls to this strategy?

A: Oh, yes. You can get confused on one extreme or the other—either you don't come to a conclusion at all or you spend all your time getting consensus. As an executive, you have to model the behavior and be willing to hear bad news.

The chairman of Samsung decided to go into the automotive business, and $15 billion later he realized it was a bad idea. He wondered why no one had told him. I've talked to executives who say they always have open forums where they ask people what they think. And then I go to the employees who confirm that there are open forums, but they'd never speak up because of the punishment that follows when they do. People aren't aware of the signals they're sending.