Most people think of themselves as honest. Ask almost anyone, and they will say they value honesty, practice it, and expect it from the people around them. What the data shows is more complicated.
Across 1,410 completed Pursuit of Honesty Assessments administered by Know Honesty between December 2024 and February 2026, one pattern appears in 68% of respondents: they score higher on honesty than on openness. The average honesty score across all respondents is 71.1%. The average openness score is 65.8%. That 5.4-point gap is small enough to ignore and large enough to explain most of the communication breakdowns people experience at work and at home.
This is a study about the space between what people are willing to say and what they are prepared to receive. That space is where real communication either happens or stops happening entirely.
What the Assessment Measures
The Pursuit of Honesty Assessment (knowhonesty.com/assessment) measures four dimensions: personal honesty, professional honesty, personal openness, and professional openness. Each dimension captures a different context for how people show up in communication. Personal scores reflect relationships outside of work. Professional scores reflect organizational and team environments.
The assessment measures communication behavior: how willing someone is to say what is true, and how available they are to receive what is true from others. The data used in this analysis comes from 1,410 completed assessments across a range of industries, ages, and professional backgrounds.
The Gap and What It Means
Honesty and openness measure different capabilities. Honesty is the willingness to say what is true. Openness is the willingness to receive it. In most models of communication, these two are treated as a package. The assessment separates them, and the separation is revealing.
When honesty runs ahead of openness, something specific happens. The person has something true to say and is willing to say it. The conditions for receiving it, internally or relationally, are not fully in place. The message may be delivered clearly and still land wrong. Or it does not get delivered at all, because the person senses the environment cannot hold it.
Know Honesty calls the result The Wall. The Wall builds quietly: in the moments where someone said the safe version instead of the true version, where feedback arrived but did not register, where the conversation ended with something still unresolved. Over time those moments accumulate, and The Wall becomes the default mode of operating.
The 5.4-point average gap in the data is a measurable version of that pattern. In 68% of respondents, honesty outpaces openness. The Wall is not a rare condition. It is the norm.
What Else the Data Shows
Two additional findings in the dataset are worth examining.
The first is age. Honesty and openness scores both increase with age. Respondents in the 45-54 bracket average 74.0% on honesty and 66.5% on openness. The 65-74 group averages 74.2% on honesty and 69.8% on openness, the highest openness score of any age group in the dataset. Respondents aged 18-24 score lower on both dimensions but show the smallest gap between them, with honesty at 63.6% and openness at 63.7%. The pattern across age groups suggests that honesty tends to develop ahead of openness through early and middle adulthood, and that openness gradually catches up later in life.
The second is industry. Consulting respondents average 68.5% on openness, the highest of any industry with a substantial sample size. Technology follows at 67.2%. Retail and automotive show the largest gaps between honesty and openness scores. Entertainment is the only industry in the dataset where openness outpaces honesty, with an openness score of 74.2% against a honesty score of 72.5%. Industry-level samples vary in size, so these findings are directional. The pattern is consistent with what most people recognize from working inside those environments.
The Professional vs. Personal Finding
One pattern in the data challenges a common assumption about where honest communication is easiest.
People score higher on professional honesty (71.7%) than personal honesty (70.6%). Openness follows the same direction, with professional openness at 67.4% compared to personal openness at 64.1%. Work, where the stakes for saying the wrong thing feel highest, is where people report being most honest and most open. The personal context, where safety should theoretically be greatest, scores lower on both dimensions.
Professional communication carries structure, clear expectations, and defined roles. Those conditions make it easier to navigate difficult conversations with some degree of predictability. Personal communication is less structured, the stakes feel more permanent, and the risk of damaging a close relationship can make people more guarded about both what they say and what they let in. The data is consistent: the personal context is where the gap tends to be widest, and where the work of closing it tends to matter most.
Honesty, Openness, and Happiness
The assessment includes a self-reported happiness measure. Honesty scores correlate with happiness at r = 0.312 across the full dataset. Openness correlates at r = 0.290. Both are moderate positive correlations. People who score higher on honesty and openness consistently report higher happiness.
Correlation does not establish cause. Happier people may find it easier to be open. More open people may build better relationships, which contribute to happiness over time. The direction of influence likely runs in both directions. What the data shows clearly is that honesty and openness connect to wellbeing in a measurable way. They are not separate from how people feel about their lives.
The gap between honesty and openness scores does not predict happiness on its own. The overall level of both does. This is consistent with what Know Honesty observes in workshop settings: the goal is not to maximize honesty at the expense of openness, or vice versa. The goal is to raise both. That is the Pursuit of Honesty.
What Closing the Gap Looks Like
The Pursuit of Honesty is an ongoing practice, not a destination. It is the work of bringing honesty and openness into closer alignment, in real conversations, over time. Know Honesty’s workshops and 1-on-1 coaching are built around this: developing the conditions under which real communication becomes possible, for individuals and for teams.
Listen Without Reservation™ is what openness looks like in practice. It is the capacity to receive what someone is actually saying without filtering it through self-protection or the urge to immediately respond. Truly and Freely You™ is what honesty looks like in practice: communicating from an accurate and grounded sense of self, rather than the version that feels safer in the moment.
The 5.4-point average gap in the data is a starting point, not a verdict. People move on both dimensions. The assessment shows where someone is right now. The work is what comes after.
Methodology
Data sourced from 1,410 completed Pursuit of Honesty Assessments administered by Know Honesty between December 2024 and February 2026. Respondents represent a range of industries, ages, and professional backgrounds. Assessment scores are normalized on a 0-100 scale across all four dimensions. Happiness was self-reported. Correlation coefficients are Pearson r values. Industry-level findings should be interpreted directionally, as sample sizes vary by category.
Take the Assessment
The Pursuit of Honesty Assessment is available at knowhonesty.com/assessment. It takes about 10 minutes and returns scores across all four dimensions: personal honesty, professional honesty, personal openness, and professional openness. Your gap score is included. Know Honesty offers workshops, corporate programs, and 1-on-1 coaching for individuals and teams ready to close it.