By Jay Whitehead

The new responsibility of personal disclosure.

Elizabeth Edwards recently announced that she has incurable cancer, while her husband is running for president. In the corporate responsibility era, there’s only one way to go. Take it public. Tell your story. Then keep running to win.

Edwards’ story reminds me how different it was just a couple short decades ago, back before the beginning of the corporate responsibility era. It calls to mind the story of architectural software company Autodesk CEO Carole Bartz, one of the first female CEOs of a major software company. Long before Carly Fiorina took the mantle and turned the spotlight on herself at HP, Carole Bartz was the technology industry’s gender pioneer. She rose to head of Autodesk because she was tough—both in the board room and in the market. But nobody, not even Bartz herself, really knew how tough she was until that fateful day at her doctor’s office.

A few days before, she discovered a lump on her breast. On the exam table, the doctor took a biopsy. Diagnosis: cancer. Immediately, her oncologist scheduled her for a mastectomy. Then she made a decision only a tough guy could make. She would keep her health issue to herself, at least until she couldn’t keep it to herself any more. She decided to get the surgery and go right back to work, as though the operation were no more than a tooth cleaning.

And that is what she did. Had the surgery in the morning, and was at an afternoon meeting. Several secrecy-shrouded weeks later, her oncologist declared the operation a success and gave her a cancer-free diagnosis. Only then did she tell her staff what had happened. Then the media picked up the story, and Bartz’s story became the stuff of Silicon Valley legend, the very definition of the modern stoic.

If Bartz pulled off that tough-guy stunt today, she’d be hung out to dry by the class-action shareholder activist attorneys. As soon as Autodesk’s stock ticked down on the news of the CEO’s cancer, the vulture culture would swoop in to grab some green. So now we have the Elizabeth Edwards example. The new formula is all disclosure: all day all night, in real time.

In being 100 percent open, there is no guarantee that the whole world will rally to your cause as it has with Elizabeth Edwards. But in hiding something material, the corporate responsibility industry will make sure you pay the price.

The Elizabeth Edwards-Carole Bartz contrast shows that “tough” no longer means stoic. Tough means willing to tell all, damn the consequences. The truth may hurt. But hiding the hurt will hurt more.