Honesty — The Reference

Jamie had been working at the firm for two years when her manager asked her to write a reference letter for a colleague named Derek.

Derek was leaving for a position at another firm — a better title, more money, the kind of move that made sense for him. He was a decent person. He worked hard. He was easy to get along with.

He was also, in Jamie’s honest assessment, not particularly good at the technical parts of his job. He made errors that required catching. She’d caught several. He’d been grateful each time, never defensive. But the pattern hadn’t changed.

The new job was a technical role.

Her manager assumed Jamie would write a strong letter. Derek assumed it too. Everyone assumed it.

Jamie sat with the blank document for a long time.

She thought about Derek’s family. His mortgage. The fact that he’d been kind to her when she was new. She thought about how a reference letter works — that glowing letters are normal, expected, almost meaningless in their sameness. That no one ever writes a bad reference letter. That writing a measured one was essentially the same as writing a damaging one.

She thought about the hiring manager at the other firm, who was going to make a decision based partly on what she wrote.

She thought about the people on that team who would have to work with Derek.

She didn’t write a bad letter. She wrote an honest one.

She highlighted what Derek genuinely did well: reliability, attitude, how he handled feedback, his consistency in showing up and following through on administrative tasks. She said he was someone she trusted in those areas.

She did not say he was technically exceptional. She did not say he would excel in a highly technical role. She wrote around it carefully, but she did not lie.

When Derek called to thank her, she said she was glad to help and that she’d written the best letter she could.

She didn’t know if he got the job. She hoped he found something that fit him better. She also knew she’d done the only thing she could live with.

Six months later, a recruiter contacted her about a position. The recruiter mentioned they’d heard her name from someone at a firm Derek had interviewed at.

She never found out exactly what had happened. But she understood that honesty has a longer arc than a single transaction.

What honesty actually is:

Honesty is not bluntness. It’s not saying everything you think. It’s not using the truth as a weapon.

Honesty is about not deceiving — not by lying outright, and not by carefully arranging true statements to add up to something false. That second kind is the harder one. It’s technically not lying, and it’s everywhere. It’s how most dishonesty in professional life works.

The situations that test honesty are rarely dramatic. They’re usually:

• A reference letter
• A question with an inconvenient answer
• A mistake you could hide if you said nothing
• A version of events that makes you look better than you were

In most of these situations, the honest path costs something real. That’s what makes it honesty, and not just convenient truth-telling.