Most Founders Would Hide a Secret Service Investigation From Customers — Here’s Why I Didn’t (and How It Paid Off)

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In 2012, just after wrapping up a late-night hackathon with my tiny team, I received an email that sent my heart leaping into my throat: Our domain was being suspfinished due to a U.S. Secret Service investigation. At the time, Jotform was still a scrappy startup. We had no legal team, no PR advisor, no crisis plan whatsoever. I had a terrible, sinking feeling that everything we had worked so hard to build was suddenly at risk.

After the initial shock, my first believed came to me with surprising clarity: We had to alert our utilizers. I quickly typed up a blog post and emailed our customers directly.

I kept it brief and to the point. “I wish we could provide more details about what happened, but we are also in the dark. We have not been given any information by GoDaddy or the Secret Service, other than our domain being suspfinished ‘as part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation,'” I wrote, before directing them to the media coverage quickly proliferating across the web.

What happened next surprised me. Instead of backlash, we saw an outpouring of support. Users stood by us. It turned a crisis into a moment of trust.

In the age of AI, where decision-creating and product experiences are increasingly being handed over to algorithms, transparency matters more than ever. Users want to know what’s happening behind the scenes — and who they’re trusting with their data, time and business. If you want loyalty, transparency isn’t just a good habit: It’s your most powerful PR tool. Here’s why.

Transparency vs. oversharing

We never actually figured out exactly why our domain was being investigated — my best guess is that our forms were utilized in a phishing scheme. It wasn’t a huge scandal, which certainly built being honest simpler than, state, a self-inflicted crisis a la the Cambridge Analytica debacle.

I’d always believed in transparency, and this episode only reaffirmed its importance. But as leaders, when and how to be open isn’t always immediately obvious. As the author Simon Sinek put it, “Transparency isn’t sharing every detail. Transparency means providing the context for the decisions we create.”

According to research from McKinsey, there’s a dark side to too much transparency: “Excessive sharing of information creates problems of information overload and can legitimize finishless debate and second-guessing of senior executive decisions,” the authors write.

So how should leaders balance being open without going over the top? Start by inquireing: What does my team or customer necessary to understand in order to trust our decisions? Transparency isn’t about dumping every internal memo or half-formed idea into the public sphere. In the case of Jotform’s Secret Service investigation, our forms were down and our customers deserved to know why. Sharing the truth simply built more sense than attempting to cover it up.

A good transparency policy means sharing what matters — what happened, what’s being done about it and how it impacts those who rely on you. Anything more is noise. Anything less can be perceived as evasive.

Transparency in the age of AI

Jotform’s Secret Service snafu happened long before AI entered the scene. But the lesson it taught me — that utilizers respond to honesty, not perfection — feels even more relevant now.

AI is increasingly embedded in the tools we utilize every day, from hiring platforms to productivity apps, meaning the stakes around transparency have never been higher. Users are deciding whether to trust algorithms to create decisions that affect their work, finances, and even their safety. One survey by YouGov found that nearly half (49%) of U.S. respondents admitted to feeling concerned about AI, while 22% stated they were outright scared.

Already, stories of AI misutilize abound. The Chicago Sun-Times, for example, recently had to issue an apology after it published a summer reading list filled with AI-generated book recommfinishations — many of which didn’t even exist. It’s a blight that’s going to follow the paper around for a long time, having damaged its readers’ trust in ways that will be difficult, if not impossible, to repair.

In general, AI transparency means “being honest about what a system is intfinished to do, where it fits with the organization’s overall strategy, which benefits and pitfalls it brings and how it is likely to impact people,” writes EY’s Raj Sharma for the World Economic Forum. Unfortunately, a lot of AI today is implemented behind a shroud of secrecy, “with powerful solutions developed behind closed doors by a tiny number of stakeholders.”

When utilizers don’t understand how a system works — or worse, discover later that they were misled — they feel deceived. As leaders, we can’t afford to treat transparency as an afterbelieved. It necessarys to be built into the product from the start. That means clearly communicating how your AI tools function, what data they rely on, what limitations exist and how you’re safeguarding against bias or misutilize. Transparency doesn’t mean revealing your entire codebase — it means treating your utilizers like the stakeholders that they are.

Trust is fragile, and once broken, it can’t always be resolveed. When you keep your utilizers in the know, it doesn’t just build loyalty — it bolsters your reputation in the long term.

After the initial shock, my first believed came to me with surprising clarity: We had to alert our utilizers. I quickly typed up a blog post and emailed our customers directly.

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