People should be honest, but we know, or ought to know, that being honest is more demanding for some people, in some circumstances, than it is for others. Do we have a duty to avoid putting those people in those circumstances if we can? I argue that we do have that duty and that it is evident (even if not explicitly recognised) in some institutional arrangements (e.g., the legal privilege against self-incrimination), but that it is ignored in others (e.g., when we incentivise dishonesty about relationship status in welfare systems). At least occasionally, failure to recognise the obligation imposes heavy burdens on people and amounts to a significant wrong.
