Hearts & Minds: A little light cv embellishment? Don’t go there

Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds is accused of claiming he was a solicitor when he didn’t qualify. Rachel Reeves continues to fend off claims she embellished her CV and may have lied in her Who’s Who entry. Sir Keir Starmer has a major problem.

To be fair, exaggerating a personal history is not confined to Labour ministers. It occurs in other political parties and corporates. Brushing it off, avoiding lasting damage to personal and organisational reputation, is difficult. Authority is inevitably lost and in posts where conveying command of the brief is essential, that can prove fatal. It’s hard, too, to be critical of someone else found to have done the same. One law for you, one for them smacks of hypocrisy.

Whether it can be defended is a question of degree. A one-off, genuine error, slip of the pen, not checking something before it is sent, that’s one thing. But a CV, LinkedIn profile, Who’s Who entry, they last and they can be revisited time and again. The mistake, if that is what it was, has been there for ages and not corrected. Worse, when raised, you’ve not denied the claim. Indeed, you’ve even cited it yourself on occasion, when you want to impress. Even the best comms expert would struggle to get out of that one.

What matters also is the level of the boast. A wrong date is one thing; but saying you’re a solicitor when you’re not, asserting you were an economist when you were in customer complaints – these are not descriptions loosely made. They carry weight and add gravitas. They make you special. And that biography, directory profile and speech, they were yours, authorised and delivered by you; they were not the result of another person describing you without your say so.

It's the loss of power that is destructive. You can try and maintain it was an oversight, that you forgot, you did not get around to amending it, that somehow you even came to believe your own untruth, that you should not have done it and hope for forgiveness. In time it might be forgotten. But if the fallout means you and your role are no longer taken seriously, then you’re toast. Your employer won’t like it - you may be a favourite, you might otherwise be suitable and losing you undermines them - but if the brand is hurting, they have no choice. No one is indispensable.

Chris Blackhurst is one of the UK’s foremost business journalists. He was previously Editor of The Independent and City Editor of the Evening Standard.