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Chicanery is common in the start-up world: With so much at stake, founders are apt to exaggerate, obfuscate, and otherwise stretch the truth when courting investors and other important stakeholders. Such deception locks up resources by prolonging the life of doomed ventures and makes it hard for VCs and employees to know where best to invest their money or labor. It also exacts a personal toll on founders themselves. The authors take a multidisciplinary approach to the problem. They argue that common justifications for such deception--the need to protect investors and employees, and the belief that all entrepreneurs engage in it--do not stand up to scrutiny. And they offer several pieces of advice to founders, drawn from moral philosophy: Dream big, but be forthcoming and honest about the evidence and assumptions underpinning your vision. And surround yourself with virtuous people who will help you be your best self.

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. How can managers reduce the number of "unknown unknowns" a project faces? Even projects that employ sophisticated techniques for risk management can encounter surprising derailments. But new research shows that modeling a project's subsystems helps expose risk areas. So, too, can scenario analysis, the use of checklists and data mining. "Directed recognition, which can entail both project design and behavioral approaches, can convert knowable unk-unks [unknown unknowns] to known unknowns,"write the authors.