I was teaching a course for an organization, and posted a photo on LinkedIn from a class I was teaching. It wasn’t a victory post. It was a small failure. I had forgotten something simple — I think it was whiteboard markers. The client had backups, but those markers were out of ink 😂 It wasn’t catastrophic. It was human.
I shared it because I believe in being transparent about the realities of teaching — not just the polished moments. I tagged the organization I was working with. Within minutes, I received a call asking me to take it down. The concern was that even a small operational hiccup reflected poorly on them. I removed the post immediately.
- No argument.
- No friction.
- Their brand, their call.
But that moment clarified something for me. There are two very different philosophies in professional life:
- One prioritizes image protection.
- The other prioritizes transparent growth.
Neither is inherently wrong. But they are incompatible. I believe sharing small failures builds trust. It humanizes the work. It improves the system. Some organizations prefer that only polished outcomes are visible. That experience helped me realize something important: Not every client is misaligned. Some are simply philosophically different.
And alignment matters more than revenue. Since then, I’ve been more intentional about working with organizations that value transparency over image protection. Because when you can’t speak honestly about small mistakes, you also can’t improve the system that caused them.