"Telling the truth"
vs.
"Seeking the truth"

It is a commonly recognized moral principle that people should not lie. The reason for this is that others are likely to believe the lie and make bad decisions because of it.

Responsible thinking does not aim directly at changing the behavior of the person who is giving information, the potential liar, but at changing the understanding of the person who is receiving the information, the one who might be deceived. To some extent lying and deception has been commonly recognized as undesirable behavior for a long time. What seems to be less frequently a concern is whether the listener or learner earnestly seeks to avoid false beliefs, and whether that person has the skills to recognize deception and avoid adopting false beliefs.

Concentrating on the truth-seeking behavior may be more successful because the listener benefits from avoiding falsehood, while the deceiver often benefits if the falsehood continues. The listener, therefore, has good incentive to cooperate with an effort to avoid error, while the deceiver usually doesn't want to cooperate in eliminating the deception.

When looking at what the truth-seeker can do to prevent false beliefs, we should go beyond just resisting lies, but also look at some of the ways people can arrive at a wrong opinion even though nobody is deliberately trying to mislead them.