Is Honesty The Best Policy?

Continuing with the same topic from yesterday, I must say that I’m reading a very interesting book, called “Where the truth lies”, and I came across a chapter which deals with being honest in the PR world.
I’ve been thinking about the level of honesty a PR practitioner can have, if he wants to achieve the top position in his career. Is it really possible to be honest?

There is an author’s statement that reflects how dishonest the whole nature of business is; “Buying something from A and then selling it on at a profit to B is fundamentally cheating on both A and B, who could have come to an agreement without you in the middle.” (Michael Wolf, 2006, p. 35). This statement is true only in one way because, as the author clarifies, without the PR as the catalysts connecting A and B, there wouldn’t be any business going on.

There are many ways of being dishonest, but what does dishonest mean? From my own point of view, someone is dishonest when he doesn’t act according to his own moral, and therefore he has been dishonest with himself.
In the chapter called “Is honesty the best policy?”, the author says, “Whatever ethical position you take, its extremely difficult when times are hard and your loyal employees are banging their begging bowls on your door to turn down income from drug companies, arms manufacturers…”(Michael Wolf, 2006, p.36).
So what should good practitioners do, if they don’t want to be seen as evil? Is it really dishonest to work for certain companies? What I really think is that good practitioners should be prepared to work for any kind of company and be able to rebuild its reputation, because that is really acting ethically towards the PR world, and that is what we, as practitioners, should be able to achieve.