"Nobody is telling me the truth any more"

"Nobody is telling me the truth any more"

I recently met with a newly appointed CEO. She'd spent many years in an operational leadership role, earned the top job through results. A few months into her first CEO role, she was frustrated.

"Nobody is telling me the truth anymore," she said. "The same people who used to give me unfiltered feedback when I ran operations - now everything is polished. I ask a direct question, I get a careful answer. I know there are problems, but no one will tell me what they are."

This got me thinking, and I wrote up some thoughts on why information gets lost on the way to the CEO and what to do about it.

The moment you take the top job, people stop being completely open with you.

It's true, and it's something that surprises almost every new CEO: the moment you take the top job, people stop being completely open with you and start to filter information.

Not because they're dishonest. Not because they don't respect you. But because power changes every conversation.

Many brilliant leaders struggle with this reality. Your promotion creates an invisible barrier between you and accurate information. People start filtering what they share.

Why people stop telling you the truth

The simple truth: your promotion changes every relationship you have in the organization.

Your promotion changes every relationship you have in the organization.

People want to spare you with the details. People try to protect you. They genuinely believe you're too busy for small problems. They think they're helping by handling issues before they reach you. They're trying to be good team members by not overwhelming you with details.

This protective instinct often is particularly strong among loyal, long-tenured employees. They remember when you had more time, when you could dive into details. Now they see your packed calendar and decide not to burden you. The irony: the people who care most about the organization may withhold the most important information.

The people who used to confide in you stop. Your former peers now report to you. The colleagues who used to share honest concerns over coffee are now calculating what's safe to say to the boss.

Information gets filtered before it reaches you. Your team wants to look good. They present problems they've already solved, not the messy challenges they're wrestling with. Bad news gets softened. Risks get downplayed.

People tell you what they think you want to hear. They're reading your signals - what you celebrate, what frustrates you, what you seem to prioritize. Then they shape their updates accordingly.

How information will be filtered

The filtering problem is a whole system of behaviors that builds around you.

The language changes around you. People start using more formal language. Emails become longer and more carefully worded. Humor disappears from communication. The casual Whatsapp message becomes a formal memo. This linguistic shift isn't just about respect - it's distance being created in real time.

Your team starts solving for you, not with you. Instead of bringing you problems to think through together, they bring you solutions they've already decided on. They're seeking approval, not input. You lose the chance to shape decisions early, when your perspective would matter most.

Information gets consolidated before it reaches you. Your leadership team synthesizes updates from their teams. Details get dropped. Nuance gets lost. Conflicting data points get reconciled into a single narrative. By the time information reaches you, it's been through multiple layers of interpretation.

Meetings become performances. When the CEO isn't there, it's real conversation, debate, disagreement, people thinking out loud. When the CEO joins, everyone becomes more polished. Presentations replace discussions. Consensus replaces honest disagreement.

Bad news travels slowly up, good news travels fast. Your team knows that delivering bad news might reflect poorly on them. So they wait. They try to fix it first. By the time you hear about problems, they're often bigger than they needed to be.

Your questions become commands. You ask casually: "Have we looked at the US market?" Within 48 hours, someone's assembled a task force. You didn't mean to start a project. You were just curious. But people heard "the CEO wants this."

Access to you becomes power. People compete for your time. Those who get more access to you gain influence. Your assistant becomes a gatekeeper, deciding who gets through. Before long, you're only hearing from people who've navigated this system successfully.

Why this is bad

This isn't just about hurt feelings or office politics. The information filtering problem may have real business consequences.

You may make decisions with incomplete information. You think you understand what's happening on the ground. You don't. Your strategy assumes facts that aren't quite accurate. Your priorities miss critical issues.

Your decision speed may slow down. When people know you're not getting complete information, they hesitate. Should they escalate? Should they wait? Should they try to give you more context? This hesitation ripples through the organization, making everything slower.

You may miss early warning signs. Markets shift. Customer preferences change. Competitors move. Technology evolves. Your frontline people see these signals first. But if those signals aren't reaching you clearly and quickly, you're always reacting late.

Problems may fester. That customer service issue your team didn't want to bother you with? It's now a crisis. That cultural problem in the regional office? It's spreading. You're reacting to things that could have been prevented if someone had told you months ago.

You may become disconnected. You start making comments in meetings that reveal you don't understand what's really happening. Your team exchanges glances. They know something you don't. And the gap widens.

And ultimately, you may lose your best people. Talented people get frustrated when they can't get through to you with important information. They watch bad decisions get made because you didn't have the full picture. Eventually, they leave.

How to get better information

I believe you can't eliminate the filtering, but you can try to reduce it.

1. Skip levels regularly

Don't just meet with your direct reports. Schedule regular time with people two or three or more levels down. Make it clear these aren't evaluations - you're genuinely trying to understand what's happening.

The first few times, you may get polite, safe answers. Keep doing it. Eventually, people will realize you actually want the truth.

Make these conversations structured but open. Have a few consistent questions you ask everyone: What's working well? What's broken? What would you change if you could? What would you do if you were CEO for a day? What do you wish leadership understood better? The consistency helps you spot patterns across different parts of the organization.

2. Create informal channels

Some of the best CEO conversations happen outside conference rooms. You might schedule regular breakfast meetings with random groups of employees every month, visit locations and ask real questions, invite people on walks around the building – no agenda, no note-taking, no nothing, just creating a safe space with real personal interest.

The important thing: Don't just go through the motions – you really have to mean them.

Consider creating anonymous channels too. Not anonymous surveys - those rarely work. But perhaps a dedicated channel where people can raise concerns, reviewed weekly by you personally. Or office hours where anyone can book time with you directly, without going through gatekeepers.

3. Reward truth-tellers

This is critical. When someone brings you bad news or challenges your thinking, thank them publicly. In a meeting. Make it clear that this is valuable, not risky. And make it clear that this is exactly what you need from everybody.

But you need to reward them with action, not just words. When someone raises a concern and you do nothing about it, you've just taught everyone that speaking up is pointless. Show that truth-telling leads to change. Even if you can't fix the problem immediately, acknowledge it, explain your thinking, and follow up later.

4. Ask "What am I missing?"

End meetings with this question. Not "any questions?" That generally silences the room. But "what am I missing?" or "what should I be asking about that I'm not?"

The first few times, everybody will just shake their heads politely. Then someone brave will speak up. Then others will follow.

Vary the question to dig deeper: "What's the thing you wish you could tell me but feel you can't?" or "If you were in my role, what would concern you most right now?" or "What's the conversation happening in the hallways that's not happening in this room?"

5. Stay connected to the ground

Complement what you're hearing with your own firsthand observations. If your sales team says the new product is getting great customer response, speak with a few customers yourself. If your operations team says the warehouse changes are working well, visit the warehouse and see it in action.

This isn't about checking up on people or doubting their honesty. It's about staying grounded in the business reality. Your team gives you their perspective - which is valuable. But you also need your own direct experience to fully understand context, nuance, and implications.

Make some visits spontaneous. Scheduled visits give people time to prepare, to clean things up, to rehearse. An unannounced drop-in to a location shows you reality, not the polished version. Just be clear about your intent - you're learning, not inspecting.

6. Use external perspectives

Your board directors see things you don't. Other CEOs in your network have insights. Advisors who work across companies spot patterns. Use these perspectives to test your understanding.

Bring in outside voices to challenge your team too. Customer advisory boards. Industry experts. Former executives from other companies. These external perspectives can say things your team won't - and can validate or challenge what you're hearing internally.

7. Monitor your own signals

Pay attention to what you're rewarding and punishing, even unconsciously. Do you interrupt people who bring up problems? Do you seem impatient with complexity? Do you gravitate toward good news?

Your team is reading these signals constantly. If your reactions shut down honesty, you'll get less of it.

Track your own patterns. Do you respond to emails about problems slower than emails about successes? Do you spend more time in meetings where people agree with you? Do you cut people off when they're explaining difficulties? These micro-behaviors matter more than any speech about open communication.

8. Build your personal "Circle of truth-tellers"

Have 2-3 people, inside or outside your organization, who have permission to tell you hard truths. People who don't need anything from you, who aren't competing for your approval, who will say what others won't.

This might be a board member, a mentor, a former boss who knows you well, a peer CEO, an advisor... What matters is that you've explicitly given them license to be brutally honest.

Schedule regular check-ins with these truth-tellers. Not just when you have a problem. Monthly or quarterly conversations where you invite them to challenge your thinking, question your assumptions, and tell you what they're seeing that you might be missing.

9. Create space for dissent

The most dangerous teams are the ones that look harmonious. No disagreement. No tension. Everyone aligned.

That's not alignment - that's silence.

Encourage your leadership team to disagree with each other in front of you. Model how to have productive conflict. Show that the best decisions come from working through different perspectives, not from false consensus.

Create structured debate on major decisions. Before making a significant choice, assign someone to play “devil’s advocate”, to argue the opposite position. Not to be difficult, but to ensure you've genuinely considered alternatives. This legitimizes dissent and makes it clear you value thorough thinking over quick agreement.

10. Make feedback flow a team responsibility

Information flow isn't just about what you do - it's about the culture your leadership team creates throughout the organization.

Work with your direct reports on how they're encouraging openness in their teams. Are they asking good questions? Are they responding well to bad news? Are they creating space for different viewpoints?

Make this a regular topic in your leadership meetings. Share what you're learning from your skip-levels. Discuss patterns you're seeing. Help your team understand that creating information flow is part of their job, not just yours.

My takeaway

You can't eliminate the information filtering problem. It's built into the role. Power creates distance, authority changes relationships. People will always filter what they share with the boss to some degree.

But you can make the problem much smaller.

You can't eliminate the information filtering problem. It's built into the role. But you can make the problem much smaller.

This requires discipline. It means consistently creating channels for truth. It means rewarding people who challenge you. It means staying connected to what's actually happening. It means acknowledging that your position creates blind spots.

The CEOs who succeed long-term are the ones who know they are not getting the whole truth, but who work actively, systematically, and continuously to get better information.

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 ABOUT THE AUTHOR

• Marion Heil is the founder and managing director of Board+CEO Advisors. She is based in Vienna.