answer:They can demand it, but they don’t get it until/unless they have given me some reason to trust them. I had a new boss a couple years ago – he was hired from outside and brought in to be Exec VP of the company. In our first conversation, he said “tell me everything – goo, bad, complaints, gripes, everything.” My answer was, “I just met you, I don’t know you, I don’t trust you to keep what I say confidential, so I will say very little”. That pissed him off. But the very next person he talked to, he told them that I had said that I didn’t know him enough to trust him. So much for demanding trust. Anyway, you don’t get trust unconditionally. Postscript: That Exec VP was fired a year later. I’m still there :-)