By Jon Kraushar
Communications Consultant

The year 2008 ends with still more cautionary examples of the importance of resolving in 2009 to verify before trusting anyone or anything. This is not a call for corrosive cynicism. It is a call for healthy skepticism.

The year-end disappointments include what some cynics might claim is “the end of trust” but what I believe can be “the beginning of verifying.”

Many people have a whole laundry list of the people they “don’t trust,” including:  politicians, the news media, Wall Street, “big business” and mega-millionaire executives, all the industries lining up for a “bailout” (and the metastasizing bailout and stimulus plans), the courts and the criminal justice system, organized religion (or, at least, certain religious “leaders”), organized labor, lawyers, HMOs and insurance companies and the education system, ranging from the public schools and the teachers’ unions to the professoriate at colleges and universities.

I recommend as a 2009 resolution a variation on Ronald Reagan’s famous catchphrase (he particularly applied it to the former Soviet Union) to “Trust But Verify.” I believe we should “Verify Before Trusting” and that the best way to do that isn’t to be cynical but to be skeptical by questioning in a healthy way.

The list goes on. There’s the Holocaust love story initially hailed by Oprah Winfrey that turns out to have been fabricated—-the love story, not the Holocaust. There’s the endless “Middle East peace process” once again proving to be a process rather than peaceful. No doubt you can add other examples of whom or what you don’t trust.

To all this I recommend as a 2009 resolution a variation on Ronald Reagan’s famous catchphrase (he particularly applied it to the former Soviet Union) to “Trust But Verify.”

I believe we should “Verify Before Trusting” and that the best way to do that isn’t to be cynical but to be skeptical by questioning in a healthy way.

That means you should raise questions about anyone and anything that could have a major impact on your life and the lives of your loved ones. Verify before trusting by questioning—as civilly as you can, gathering as much information as you can, holding others accountable (and yourself accountable), speaking up and getting involved—not just criticizing from the sidelines but participating on the frontlines. Lead. Follow. Join. Contribute. Get “in the way” of what you care about rather than getting “out of the way.” Don’t withdraw because you’re disillusioned or disgusted. As the saying goes, “Get better, not bitter.”

I believe that words are very significant but that the ultimate test of any of us and of our ideas is in deeds and results. Deeds and results—what you do, what others do, what is done to you, what you do to others, what the actual consequences are—are the real ways to verify; to separate promises from follow-through, lies from truth, phony (and phonies) from genuine.

If it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Don’t just go on faith; go on facts. Don’t let your greed or your fond hopes blind you to the need to perform your “due diligence.”

Verify Before Trusting. That will make for a happier New Year.

Communications consultant Jon Kraushar is at www.jonkraushar.net.