The Moment of Truth

Have you seen an advertisement on Fox for their new prime-time game show, The Moment of Truth? According to a casting notice on the Internet, "Contestants who are up for the challenge are hooked up to a lie detector and asked 21 increasingly personal and delicate questions. If a player answers all 21 honestly, as determined by the polygraph, he or she could win $500,000."

(Check out the trailer HERE.)

You can guess what all the buzz will be about--a contestant is strapped to a polygraph and in front of his family, friends, and 20 million strangers admits to stealing from his children's piggy bank...or says she's secretly attracted to her husband's best friend...or tells the world that he hired a hit man to take out dear ol' Grandma for the inheritance.

Even more gut-wrenching is the fact that there's a button where the contestant’s friends and family sit that they can use once during the game to “rescue” the player from a difficult question. Except, according to executive producer Mike Darnell, the friends and family never seem to use the button for its intended purpose. When one contestant was asked if she would be more attracted to her husband if he lost 20 pounds—which is considered a relatively easy query—her husband lunged for the button.

Darnell told the press, gleefully, “This is the first game show where you technically know all the questions and you know all the answers...and yet this is the hardest game show I’ve ever been a part of in my entire life.”

Why? Because the only reason a game about scruples is entertaining...is simply because the players have none.

This is the exact reason why I came up with The Puzzle Principle. When your set of core values is so solid and so accountable that it provides a morally-impregnable solution to each and every scenario your life or career is confronted with, the answers are easy. And, more important, above reproach.

When the "Moment of Truth" appears in your life--how easy will the answer be?