I’m often asked if parties during meditation sessions ever intentionally lie.

Before I answer that, let’s first consider the bigger picture. Deception not only includes omission or concealing critical information and commission or misleading someone by making a false statement, but also paltering or intentionally making a truthful statement to mislead someone. For example, assume you are attempting to sell your car that you’ve owned for a year. Two times in the past year it wouldn’t start and you had to have a mechanic make repairs. Other than that it worked fine. A potential buyer says, “This car seems like it works perfectly. I expect it hasn’t had any mechanical problems.” If you reply by saying, “The car drives great. Last month when the temperature was near zero it started with no problem.” You would have engaged in paltering, meaning, you didn’t make a false statement, but you used a truth to mislead.

Two decades ago social psychologist Bella DePaulo asked adults to record every instance they tried to mislead someone. The average was once or twice a day. Human beings have a talent for deceiving one another. Studies have shown that the majority of our lies are to promote and/or protect ourselves and that the age group who lies the most are teenagers, 13 to 17 years-old. The age group least likely to lie are 60 years-old and above.

In the arena of professional negotiation, studies have shown that from one-third to half of professional negotiators intentionally used deception during their sessions . So to answer the question as to whether parties in mediation lie, well, my answer is, “probably.”

But the mediators role is not to determine the truth. The mediators role is to help the parties decide what they would like to do to resolve the issues—not argue about who is right. I tell people learning to be mediators that if they ask a party in private who is right and who is wrong, they’ll answer that they to be in the right. And if they were to ask the other party the same question, they’d get the same answer.

Mediators don’t focus on the past; mediators help people focus on the future regardless of who is telling the truth.

I once received a phone call from an acquaintance who was very upset with conditions at her workplace. She said her boss, the CEO, made impossible demands and is never happy with her performance.  He expected her to be available 24 hours a day. If she didn’t answer her work phone, he would immediately call her personal phone. Half the time she said she had no idea what he expected of her. If she asked for clarification, he often got angry and short-tempered with her.

She had gone to the vice president of Human Resources to discuss her work situation, which she described as a form of bullying. That colleague proposed an informal mediation to discuss her workplace issues. Her call to me was for more information about what to expect during the mediation.

Her call to me was to ask if I thought mediation would help. I suggested we first talk about bullying. To be considered workplace bullying there must be repeated actions intended to cause the victim physical or psychological distress, as well as an imbalance of power.

The effects of workplace bullying include damage to self-esteem, physical health, cognitive functioning and emotional well-being. I asked if these applied to her. She said she was decidedly unhappy. Her health was suffering, her relationships with family and friends were suffering and yet she felt she had no where to go for help. When she confided with friends in the workplace, they listened, but could offer her no support.

We discussed the implications of the power imbalance. Did she feel comfortable that the HR vice president would be able to guarantee her safety from any retribution? She felt that he could do that.

A week later I heard from her. The HR vice president convened the meeting and immediately focused the discussion on her and what she had been doing wrong. In my opinion, the so-called “mediation” was just a continuation of the bullying. The VP failed to provide a safe “level playing field” for discussion of legitimate concerns.

Within a few months she was able to find another job where she flourished. The organization she left replaced her. That person lasted less than two years as the situation repeated.

The critical factor is the extreme power imbalance. Like many other mediators I do not support mediation of workplace bullying when the situation has advanced to the degree described in this example.

The Workplace Bullying Institute reports that in 2014, a Tennessee law took effect that addresses abusive conduct, which is defined as something that a reasonable person would find hostile, offensive and unrelated to an employer’s legitimate business interests, including repeated infliction of verbal abuse, undermining of a person’s work performance and verbal or physical conduct that a reasonable person would find threatening or humiliating. This law appears to be the first step toward protecting workers against bullying in the workplace. Similar laws have followed in other states.