"The more you process information, the further you get from the truth," argues Joshua Greenbaum in Intelligent Enterprise. "Knowing the truth about things that take place in front of your very eyes — where you're the real-time analyst, observer, and recorder — is relatively easy."

He then raises a point that is deeply relevant to companies that intend to capitalize on customer intelligence. The fact of the matter is that we may be deeply reliant on information that is many steps removed from our immediate experience.

As Greenbaum puts it, "the moment an analyst relies on information that's dated or has been processed in some way, the truth becomes highly interpretive. Do you have complete information? Is it from a reliable source? Is the data timely? Do you understand how the data and metadata are stored and are intended to be interpreted? Are the correlations and assumptions that you're making about related data valid? Once the analyst is no longer watching and observing events in real time, these questions become harder to answer with confidence. Without an unequivocal yes to each question, the absolute truth can only be guessed with some hopefully reasonable degree of accuracy."

Despite the little lies we tell ourselves about "customer centricity" and "360 degree views," we'll simply have to accept that the whole Truth about our customers will always elude us. We will never fully know them. In fact, they don't even know themselves. The strange thing is, the closer we -- and our competitors -- get to them, the more elusive they may prove to be.