Great SMEs don’t disclose their company’s secret information, nor do they disclose the secrets of their customers or partners to unauthorized parties—period. Nothing else on this subject should need to be said.

Keeping confidences is not always that simple, however. If it were, our news feeds would not be brimming daily with unauthorized disclosures from government agencies and company executives. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange would never have risen to global notoriety.

Why do all large organizations grapple with violations of confidence? Keeping secrets, it turns out, is difficult to do. Sigmund Freud wrote in 1905, “No mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.”

For many psychological and emotional reasons, it is more difficult to keep a secret than it is to disclose it. People have a natural propensity to tell. We are hardwired to share what we know, and filtering information that should not be disclosed can be tedious and burdensome. Researchers have determined that the bigger the secret, the harder it is to keep.

Often in my career I have been in meetings where customers seek confidential information from SMEs. They ask something along the lines of “We know you’re providing service to our competition. What are they planning to do with this technology?” With this simple inducement, many SMEs will then spill the beans.

Some SMEs acknowledge that they are violating a confidence, but they do it anyway. I’ve heard SMEs say things like, “Well, I am not authorized to tell you who is doing this, but there might be a major social media company whose name rhymes with Gracebook who is doing this.” As if the SME is not violating a confidence by using thinly veiled language! This approach is hardly confidential.

If Freud was correct in 1905 that mortals could not keep secrets, the problem is undoubtedly worse today. Our digital world is overflowing with mechanisms tuned for disclosure. Our devices allow us to communicate with our lips and chatter with our fingertips. At times, smartphones do indeed ooze with betrayal.

SMEs needn’t be examples of Freudian psychology. They can, they should, they must keep confidences.