A very good and very understandable reason

Imagine this; you have lived you entire professional life striving for one of the most prestigious positions that someone in your field could aspire to. Not only that, you are eminently qualified by all the evaluating criteria that could be applied. You have been practicing in this field for decades; you have an established record of excellence; and you are also the exact type of person that the people who have the power to put you into that position want.

In short, you know that you should get the position. Nothing should stand in your way.

Yet, there is a problem, or maybe several. Before you embarked on your professional career, your behavior was not exactly exemplary. There is a large amount of data (note that I did not call it evidence) indicating this. Friends and acquaintances state that you engaged in this behavior, and also say that your friends did too. There are indications in recorded forms that you participated in activities that were perhaps typical of youth and indiscretion. In particular, you had a fondness for a particular vice -- alcohol -- and apparently indulged in this vice in various social settings. You yourself have admitted to enjoying this vice and being with others who enjoyed it, and who also over-indulged in it. And the problem with this vice is that when people are under its influence, they behave differently. They can act in ways that would be distasteful, even abhorrent, to those not under the influence. They can act in ways that would bother and concern yourself when you are not under that influence.

And there are other indications, troubling, concerning, about other vices, preferences, that may have been facilitated by or compensated for by others, just to maintain your lifestyle and important career path. All of this adds up to a picture different than how you present yourself, and how others present you and speak of you.

So are we to believe that you had this vice, this attraction, and yet never engaged in the behaviors it encourages -- none of them -- and you KNOW with certainty you never did, even though alcohol can affect the higher functions of the intellect, including memory? Are we to believe everyone that attests to your tastes and behavior is not telling the truth? That the words written about your activities, by your friends and defined and explained by your friends, mean nothing? That your word, above all, is paramount?

Especially now, when obscuring the truth as much as possible -- not letting it interfere with your ascension to this esteemed position, this position for which you are qualified and to which you have aspired in your long professional career -- would make it possible for you to achieve the goal?

It defies logic. It defies a basic appreciation of the cumulative testimony of witnesses, records, and statements. For you to deny about yourself what so many others state is true, state that behaviors and events occurred, repeatedly, stretches our bounds of belief beyond what they can tolerate. And so we doubt, strongly, the breadth of your complete denials. These denials don't make sense in light of everything else we know -- except that we KNOW you have a very good, in fact an extraordinarily good, reason to make a sufficient number of the people who matter believe you just enough to insure that you are placed in the position that you believe you deserve, a position for which many of these people have their own good strong reasons to make sure you are placed there.

In short, you have a very good and very understandable reason to lie. And we know it.

So we conclude -- you are lying. And because you are lying, you should not get this position, no matter how much you deserve it, no matter how good you would be at it.