Information Disclosure: Alphabet Soup

Information disclosure often helps in negotiation. It can also damage your position faster than you expect.

Most people ask the wrong question.

They ask:

“Should I disclose this?”

A better question is:

“What is likely to happen if I disclose it - or if I don’t?”

That is the better question because information is never neutral. The moment you disclose it, you shape the other side’s expectations, confidence, leverage and choices.

Sometimes that works in your favour. Disclosure can build trust, create movement, reduce suspicion and open up opportunities that would not otherwise exist.

At other times, it can weaken your position, harden the other side’s stance or encourage them to ask for more.

The real challenge is not deciding whether disclosure is right or wrong. It is working out how that disclosure is likely to land once the other side hears it.

Why the same information can land very differently

Take Alphabet, the parent company of Google, and AI investment.

When investors first heard that Alphabet was planning to invest heavily in AI, that sounded positive. It suggested ambition, innovation and a business determined to strengthen its future position.

But when more detail emerged about the scale of the investment, the likely impact on margins and the uncertainty over how quickly the returns would come, the mood changed. Alphabet’s share price fell as investors focused less on strategic ambition and more on cost, payback and risk.

The conversation moved from:

“This looks strategically exciting.”

to:

“What is this going to cost, how long will it take to pay back, and what does it mean for shareholders in the meantime?”

That is why information disclosure is rarely as simple as “say it” or “don’t say it.” The information itself in the example was not good or bad. What changed was the likely consequence of disclosing more of it.

Before you disclose something important, ask yourself:

• What is this likely to make the other side think?
• What is it likely to make them do next?
• Does it move them closer to my preferred outcome or theirs?
• Is this the right time to say it?

Information disclosure is less about rules and more about judgement.

Good negotiators don't just think about whether something is true, fair or reasonable to disclose. They think about how that disclosure is likely to land once it reaches the other side.

That is one of the reasons I built the Companion LIVE system. It allows users to test different disclosure choices - what to say, when to say it and how to frame it - before they have the real conversation.

Because in negotiation, the issue is rarely whether you can disclose something – it’s whether you should.

Will this information move the negotiation in your favour - or in theirs?

Sam Macbeth, 25 June 2026

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