Cicero's De Officiis: the useful and the honourable cannot stay apart for long
There is one thing you would rather the next committee did not find. Until they find it, the choice is yours. After they find it, it is not.
Not one sentence was false, and it is still deceit. Cicero first sets out what is honourable, then what is useful, and in Book III shows that where the two appear to conflict, the conflict is only apparent.
From what you are sitting on, pick what affects other people — a sponsor leaving, unspent money, broken equipment — and say it yourself, first. And put the real attendance number in your next report, even if it is smaller.
The full biography is on the public version →
Marble bust by Bertel Thorvaldsen after the Roman original. Thorvaldsen Museum, Copenhagen. PD-self (photograph); sculpture by Thorvaldsen (d. 1844), PD by age
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