The most honest paragraph may need less defense than the paragraph written to sound honest.

Saying a true thing and performing candor are not the same act. Writing built to demonstrate honesty tends to arrive wrapped in qualifiers, apologies and explanations of how hard it was to admit, because the display needs support. A plainly true sentence usually stands on its own, short and slightly uncomfortable.

Look at your last piece of writing, or your last difficult message, and find the sentence with the most scaffolding around it. Try deleting the scaffolding and see whether the sentence survives. If it does, it was the honest one; if it collapses, you were building an impression rather than telling something.