I'd disagree, at least as far as internal transparency is concerned. My experience in founding and running GrantTree for the last 5 years has been that total in

I'd disagree, at least as far as internal transparency is concerned. My experience in founding and running GrantTree for the last 5 years has been that total internal transparency of all business data (including the finances and individual transactions) has huge benefits in terms of both building trust between staff and the company, and in terms of forcing the company to face important issues and solve them properly rather than "hack" a solution via secret pay raises and bonuses. If you want to build the kind of company where people stay because they love to work there, rather than the kind of company where people stay because they're getting paid a lot, I would say that total internal transparency is essential. As far as external transparency goes, that is more thorny but I think a strong commitment to transparency helps there too. Customers don't want you to pretend you're perfect. Shit happens in business. Things go wrong. Customers want to know that when shit inevitably goes wrong, you'll own up to it, take responsibility, and fix things competently. If you have a habit of pretending everything's ok when it's not, well, that's a bad sign. If, on the other hand, you're noticeably transparent about your business, that's a good sign to customers that this will carry over when shit happens.