Do you think it's ever okay to lie?  If you were negotiating for the release of hostages, most people would probably agree that if lying would lead to the hostages' safety, it's okay. What about in business, where the stakes are rarely life or death? Business executives such as Martha Stewart have gone to jail for lying (submitting a false statement to federal investigators). Is misrepresentation or omitting factors okay as long as there is no outright lie? 

Consider the negotiation process. A good negotiator never shows all his cards, right? And so omitting certain information is just part of the process. Well, it may surprise you to learn that the law will hold you liable for omitting information if partial disclosure is misleading or if one side has superior information not accessible to the other.
In one case ( Jordan v. Duff and Phelps ), a company (Duff and Phelps) withheld information from an employee (Jordan) about the impending sale of the company. The problem: Jordan was leaving the organization and therefore sold his shares in the company. Ten days later, when the sale of the company became public, those shares became worth much more. Jordan sued his former employer on the grounds that it should have disclosed this information to him. Duff and Phelps countered that it had never lied to Jordan. The US Court of Appeals argued that in such situations, one party cannot take "opportunistic advantage" of the other. In the eyes of the law, sometimes omitting relevant facts can be as bad as lying.

In a business context, is it ever okay to lie? When? Do you think it's fair to fire an employee who lies, no matter what the nature of the lie? Is withholding information for your own advantage the same as lying? Why or why not?