If you can see elongating noses around you, don’t be too surprised, as lying may be becoming part of our job descriptions in the future.

According to a survey by executive communications consultancy The Aziz Corporation, bosses are perfectly happy for employees to lie on the firm’s behalf, but say it’s wrong for workers to lie to them.

Only 7% of UK bosses feel it is acceptable for an employee to occasionally lie to them, yet almost half (46%) believe it’s fine to tell an untruth if it will protect the company. More than a third think it’s acceptable to lie to customers.

One of the survey’s most damning findings is that 14% of bosses would not mind if a potential employee lied on their CV. In fact, this was considered more acceptable than taking a sickie or fiddling an expenses claim.

Professor Khalid Aziz, chairman of The Aziz Corporation, said: “Honesty may not always be the best policy from a business point of view, but it is certainly something that senior managers should encourage among their staff.”