How often does something go wrong with some business relationship - from a screw-up, to a missed or late appointment - and you sense that the explanation you are getting is a line?

The other day a client sent me an irritated email about a piece of information he hadn't received.  I said that I would check into it and get right back to him only to discover that I had been sent the information two weeks prior and assumed that I was only being copied on the response.  Whoops.

Five minutes later I composed an email to accompany the lost report.  "The bottleneck was me," I wrote, explaining the situation and apologizing.  He responded by telling me that the same thing had happened to him and thanked me for the information.  Refreshing.

Part of my job is to visit clients when things haven't gone so well.  I find that they appreciate an apology, especially when it is included as part of an explanation of what went wrong, and what has been changed to assure it won't happen again.

Fast forward.  Yesterday an employee asked me what we were going to tell a client about something that had gone wrong.  The problem wasn't the end of the world and had been fixed.  "To answer your question, tell them the truth," I said.  She smiled, relieved and empowered.

The truth is clean, easy to repeat and good for the soul.