What Ford captures here isn't merely about honesty—it's about the architecture of your character itself. When you cut corners only when observation disappears, you've admitted that your standards are external, borrowed from the watching world rather than rooted in you. A surgeon operating on a patient alone in an empty hospital at 3 a.m. performs with the same precision as during morning rounds because her excellence has become internal, almost instinctive; the absence of witnesses changes nothing. That's the difference between reputation and integrity—one performs for an audience, the other performs for itself.