Of course it is!

Honesty is a key ingredient in any kind of relationship. Being a cultural relation specially adds to its important. Let us use you and me as a metaphor for two cultures. How would I or anyone expect you to sit with me on the same table discussing our cultural differences and finding a common ground between us, when I am not being honest with you? How can I expect you to believe in what I am saying about myself and how can I believe in what you are saying about yours.

A cultural relation is a bridge between different places, and honesty is like the strength of the foundation. If honesty is gone the bridge is doomed to fall. How do you expect anyone to travel on a bridge that has a life time expectation of 0 hours! Nobody will ever consider a lying friend to be his favorite. Nobody will marry a liar. Nobody will prefer to do business with a liar and certainly nobody will exchange cultural concepts with a liar! If honesty is gone, then so is trust. And if trust is gone, then so is respect…and if all those were gone, then so did the whole relationship!

On the other hand, if we were expected to be honest with each other, the whole process of communicating our different backgrounds will be easier and shorter, and we will be able to soon understand our differences and deal with them. Because the presence of honesty created an atmosphere of mutual respect, and made the whole thing more straight forward. And as they say; Best approach is the direct approach.

Half way of solving a problem is defining it. Culture conflicts are not a light thing to deal with. It creates problems and struggles to adjust. That’s why accepting the fact that differences exist and honestly define those differences is a huge step toward solving this dilemma. Once you’ve done that all is left is to adjust to it. And as difficult as this step may sound to be, the atmosphere of honesty, mutual respect and trust makes things much easier than it normally is.

And hence, to conclude, honesty is extremely necessary for a better culture relation. In fact, it is as we said before at the beginning of this article is a key ingredient for it to even exist. That’s why it is very important for us to be honest with each other and sincerely try to understand our difference and respect them.