Help others make things the best they can be

Your awareness will grow as a function of your honesty. As you become more honest in acknowledging your own faults, you will increase in how easily you can see the faults in others. Their own ability to see their faults—like your own—is based on their honesty, and as your honesty grows relative to the average person’s, the faults you will see will increase. Increased ability to see faults comes with increased responsibility to do something about them.

God’s will is for everything to be as good as it can be. Since Eden, mankind has been charged to discover and implement the potential of all things.¹ Sin is what is less than what is best,² and we are accountable for the sin we see but do not say anything about.³ Your obligation as a believer in Jesus is to address all situations that deviate from your understanding of the best they could be:

Behold, I sent you out to testify and warn the people, and it becometh every man who hath been warned to warn his neighbor. (D&C 88:81)

Point out options, costs, and benefits of which others are unaware. Help other people see the additional options you see, giving them sufficient reasons to believe that they exist, they are possible, and they are better. Help others see consequences beyond what they see: both in terms of benefits and costs. Help them understand the consequences they don’t recognize or correctly estimate.

Many people today would consider the mention of others’ faults as being overly judgmental. However, the fact is that, in most cases, a person recognizes their own dishonesty and will give blatant indications of this before you draw attention to it. We all constantly leak out clues about our own judgment of our own thoughts, feelings, and actions—you just have to learn to recognize them. This tendency not only gives a strong tool for ensuring your judgment is just,⁴ but also highlights the moral obligation you have of calling out the faults of others. One of the reasons people continue to emit clues of their own self-judgment, even when they see themselves as doing something wrong, is that they are subconsciously seeking to soothe their conscience. If a person emits a pseudo confession to you, they are seeking pseudo forgiveness from you, which they will obtain if you allow their confession of moral crime to stand unchallenged. Do not let people do this. When someone admits to you that they have done less than their best, call attention to it, whether it is a seemingly small or large issue. Every time you leave a pseudo confession unchallenged, you contaminate yourself with the same dishonesty of the confessor, and open the door to surprisingly substantial consequences.

If you see a person doing something other than what you think is best, bring it up. When a person does less than the best they know, point it out to them. When a person does less than the best you believe they are capable of, you should say something to them to indicate that you believe they are capable of more, giving them as strong a reason as you can to prove your point.

Some people will act as badly as they can get away with. Having numbed their conscience, they no longer feel guilt and are only governed by the desire to avoid getting caught. To help them, confront them when you see them do or say something wrong.⁵ If they do so in public, confront them publicly.⁶ Help them feel the guilt they should for what they could have done better.