An assumption: Every bargaining/negotiation situation involves questions of ethics.
What are the understood “rules of the game?”

• What is fair?
• What is just?
• What is legal?
• What is appropriate and acceptable?
• What is expected?

• What is practical?
• What is expedient?
• What is efficient?
• What serves one’s interests or a client’s interests?
• What is necessary to win?

• The Issue of Trust: Parties need to trust one another to some extent in order to reach agreement.
• The Issue of  Honesty: Parties need to provide information to gain agreement.
• The Dilemma: Limiting trust, disguising preferences and goals, and manipulating information may lead to a better outcome.

• Is deception about “lying” and “truth-telling?”
• Misrepresenting goals, interests, position
• Falsifying or fabricating information
• Witholding information
• Deception: “tricks,” rumors, misleading claims

• Profit
• Expectations of lying/deception
• Mistrust or very limited trust
• External pressures (professional and/or personal)
• Competition
• Immediate, short term needs
• Prior successes with lying/deception
• Malicious intent

• Ambiguity or uncertainty
• Lack of commitment
• Unwillingness to provide information or make a decision
• Good cop/bad cop
• Inability to verify
• Inconsistency
• Incongruent nonverbal and verbal behavior
• Defensiveness
• Aggression or competitiveness

• Model honest and trusting behavior
• Ask questions
• Recognize lying/deception tactics
• Raise doubts
• Arrange consequences or “pre-negotiate” a protective contract
• Confront behavior (“constructive confrontation”)
• Tit for tat?
• Walk away

• Loss of trust
• Relationship damage
• Short-term win, long-term loss?
• Reputation
• Emotional response
• Escalation spiral
• Reciprocal behavior (tit for tat?)

• When the ends justify the means?
• When the other party deserved it or “had it coming?”
• When there is no harm, no foul?
• When it’s just a joke, just in fun?
• When it is is assumed to be part of the way you play the game?
• Is it ever ethical?