Effective communication? Having painted herself into a rather tight corner, our would-be entrepreneur yet managed to come up trumps by simply NOT communicating, and doing it very effectively at that.

It remains to answer our question: Was it straight?

Well, now, can we accuse Kathy Taggares of lying? No, it seems she didn't - at least, not with words

But unlike ethical dilemmas we've discussed in the past - when people are confronted with bizarre, freak circumstances they had never planned for, and then face agonizing choices regarding how to react - I'm now talking about cases where people willfully and proactively steer events in a certain direction.

Take the case of the owner of a $32 million business whose daring entry into entrepreneurship was recounted in a leading business magazine.

Just over a decade ago, Kathy Taggares was itching to ditch her employer, frozen-food maker Chef Ready Foods, to start her own business.

She decided to approach Marriott International about buying one of its salad dressing factories. Not that she was overly optimistic("As a young single woman, I'd already had so many doors slammed in my face"), but what was there to lose?

But surprisingly, her overtures met with a particularly warm reception. Marriott even offered to help her finance the $5 million purchase over several years.

It seemed almost too good to be true. Actually, it was.

Slowly it dawned on Kathy that the Marriott people believed she was representing her employer, Chef Ready, as a solo entrepreneur. Had they realized that she was, in reality, representing herself, there was no way they would have taken her so seriously.

If she had owned up to the truth, the game would been up, for sure. Yet another door would have been slammed in her face. So what did Kathy do now? Simple.

"They never directly asked me," she confesses, "so I let them believe what they wanted to believe."

Sure, they found out at the end - and they weren't at all charmed by the deception - but by then, the deal had all but gone through. Twelve years and one more acquisition later, Kathy Taggeres' company, K.T's Kitchens, now employs 350 people.

Effective communication? Having painted herself into a rather tight corner, our would-be entrepreneur yet managed to come up trumps by simply NOT communicating, and doing it very effectively at that.

It remains to answer our question: Was it straight?

Well, now, can we accuse Kathy Taggares of lying? No, it seems she didn't - at least, not with words.

Just over a decade ago, Kathy Taggares was itching to ditch her employer, frozen-food maker Chef Ready Foods, to start her own business.

She decided to approach Marriott International about buying one of its salad dressing factories. Not that she was overly optimistic("As a young single woman, I'd already had so many doors slammed in my face"), but what was there to lose?

But surprisingly, her overtures met with a particularly warm reception. Marriott even offered to help her finance the $5 million purchase over several years.

It seemed almost too good to be true. Actually, it was.

Slowly it dawned on Kathy that the Marriott people believed she was representing her employer, Chef Ready, as a solo entrepreneur. Had they realized that she was, in reality, representing herself, there was no way they would have taken her so seriously.

If she had owned up to the truth, the game would been up, for sure. Yet another door would have been slammed in her face. So what did Kathy do now? Simple.

"They never directly asked me," she confesses, "so I let them believe what they wanted to believe."

Sure, they found out at the end - and they weren't at all charmed by the deception - but by then, the deal had all but gone through. Twelve years and one more acquisition later, Kathy Taggeres' company, K.T's Kitchens, now employs 350 people.

Effective communication? Having painted herself into a rather tight corner, our would-be entrepreneur yet managed to come up trumps by simply NOT communicating, and doing it very effectively at that.

It remains to answer our question: Was it straight?

Well, now, can we accuse Kathy Taggares of lying? No, it seems she didn't - at least, not with words

But surprisingly, her overtures met with a particularly warm reception. Marriott even offered to help her finance the $5 million purchase over several years.

It seemed almost too good to be true. Actually, it was.

Slowly it dawned on Kathy that the Marriott people believed she was representing her employer, Chef Ready, as a solo entrepreneur. Had they realized that she was, in reality, representing herself, there was no way they would have taken her so seriously.

If she had owned up to the truth, the game would been up, for sure. Yet another door would have been slammed in her face. So what did Kathy do now? Simple.

"They never directly asked me," she confesses, "so I let them believe what they wanted to believe."

Sure, they found out at the end - and they weren't at all charmed by the deception - but by then, the deal had all but gone through. Twelve years and one more acquisition later, Kathy Taggeres' company, K.T's Kitchens, now employs 350 people.

Effective communication? Having painted herself into a rather tight corner, our would-be entrepreneur yet managed to come up trumps by simply NOT communicating, and doing it very effectively at that.

It remains to answer our question: Was it straight?

Well, now, can we accuse Kathy Taggares of lying? No, it seems she didn't - at least, not with words

If she had owned up to the truth, the game would been up, for sure. Yet another door would have been slammed in her face. So what did Kathy do now? Simple.

"They never directly asked me," she confesses, "so I let them believe what they wanted to believe."

Sure, they found out at the end - and they weren't at all charmed by the deception - but by then, the deal had all but gone through. Twelve years and one more acquisition later, Kathy Taggeres' company, K.T's Kitchens, now employs 350 people.

Effective communication? Having painted herself into a rather tight corner, our would-be entrepreneur yet managed to come up trumps by simply NOT communicating, and doing it very effectively at that.

It remains to answer our question: Was it straight?

Well, now, can we accuse Kathy Taggares of lying? No, it seems she didn't - at least, not with words

Effective communication? Having painted herself into a rather tight corner, our would-be entrepreneur yet managed to come up trumps by simply NOT communicating, and doing it very effectively at that.

It remains to answer our question: Was it straight?

Well, now, can we accuse Kathy Taggares of lying? No, it seems she didn't - at least, not with words. "I just left some of the blanks empty", as she expresses it. But do you have to SAY something in order to lie?

Personally, I don't think so. I'd go along with Robert Louis Stevenson's definition of honesty: "not just to state the true facts, but to convey a true impression." If so, no objective person can sincerely deny that Taggeres lied.

That being the case, we're forced to ask ourselves another pertinent question: Is it ever legitimate to lie in business?

Omitting cases of outright fraud where the law clearly says it's not, the author of the article I cited (Jeremy Useem: "Should You Lie?") writes that his magazine "put that question to dozens of entrepreneurs and ethicists. And while the answers that came back are neither black nor white, one thing is clear: Those who say that lying has no place in business aren't telling the truth."

Mark well what is being said here, and let it sink in. Sure, we weren't born yesterday. We know too much about the sharks that abound in the business world. Who is there amongst us who has not been bitten by them?

But that's not what our author is saying here. He's saying that, in the eyes of the great masses of business people out there -including some of the most respectable among them - lies and deception have a LEGITIMATE place in the world of business.

This does not necessarily mean that some respectable entrepreneurs condone cheating and deceiving as a general practice. (Hopefully, they don't, and probably, they wouldn't remain "respectable" too long if they did.) What it does mean it means many of them believe there's a time and place for everything. In other words, an occasional subtle deception,if not outright lie,is in order and appropriate when circumstances demand it.

And to prove the point, the essay in Fortune