Ethics and Your Business: Bluffing vs. Lying

“Business negotiation is similar to poker. Just because I may be bluffing doesn’t mean I am morally defective. Bluffing is a universally recognized part of the game,” responded one reader to Steel Market Update’s new “Ethics and Your Business” column.

Is the steel business like a poker game? Some would say that bluffing is basically another form of lying, distorting the truth to gain an unfair advantage. Others would argue that bluffing is just gamesmanship, and that the bluffer is not acting unethically in any way. It would be naïve to believe that what the other player is telling you is always the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, free of any calculation or exaggeration. Without bluffing, a company would put itself at a big competitive disadvantage in all its dealings, they say.