Radical transparency — is it for you?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_ceo.html
While reading through my backlog of old Wired magazines I didn’t have time to read while my mum was alive, I came across the above article by Clive Thompson suggesting that all companies can benefit by being absolutely open about everything they’re doing.
He calls it radical transparency. But is it for everyone?
Well, on the plus side:

• It has the potential to build trust with customers and potential customers.
• It allows crowdsourcing-type input to new product development (NPD) and customer relations processes.
• It encourages your whole organization to live by its stated values.

But the potential downsides are many:

• It could damage trust with other stakeholders like commercial partners and suppliers if you reveal things they’d rather you didn’t.
• It’s clearly not an option for everyone i.e. the MoD, MI5, firms which rely on technological innovation or ones with dark secrets to hide.
• The flashback if found to have lied or hidden something bad would be worse than if you’d not pretended to have been a saint in the first place.
• It risks damaging any competitive advantage you may have in things like NPD, R&D or customer processes if you’re too open about them.
• The most transparent PLCs pay the price of share price volatility for offering up info on their failures while the least transparent are rewarded with stability. Maybe anything which could be price-sensitive could be treated in the usual fashion.

So, overall, it looks like a bit of a non-runner for most firms. But for challenger brands trying to impress target customers in an area not known for transparency, it might be worth a look, but with carefully defined limits.