Back when I was a junior developer / PC support guy, I was put in the position of helping interview replacements when my manager left the company (traditional I

Back when I was a junior developer / PC support guy, I was put in the position of helping interview replacements when my manager left the company (traditional IT manager role). We interviewed three people and then it was decided to let the manager role go unfilled. So I ended up being the one to call them. Two of them handled it with grace and professionalism. The third decided to go over my head and call the VP who was in charge of IT at the time and have a surly conversation. So the moral is - transparency might make you feel like a good person but from a business perspective there are valid reasons not to choose that path. Also - part of working in HR is that you must deal with the general public - which means people will be unpredictable and you have to take worst-case scenarios into consideration.