I have failed in many, many things. Growing up playing sports; as a hapless student in school (before I actually gave it some effort with my MBA); professionally; with my family; and in understanding that I am powerless over alcohol.

Professionally, some people treat failure as a black mark—something to hide, defend or quietly bury. I’ve watched people contort themselves by defending decisions that were simply indefensible. I imagine admitting the mistake felt worse than doubling down on it. I understand that impulse. I’ve lived it before. Most of us have at some juncture.

But through my sobriety over the past seven years, I no longer see failure in a negative light. After all, we’re not in some 1960s-era Bond film and Ernst Stavro Blofeld isn’t going to sacrifice me for my missteps while stroking his cat—at least I hope not.

Let me give you a concrete example of what I mean: Before I found sobriety, I once became so argumentative with two members of the board of directors of a client that we lost the account. They fired us. And we deserved it—well, I deserved it. I embarrassed our agency and myself. And the worst part wasn’t losing the revenue (although that really, really sucked). It was knowing that people whom I respected had watched me become someone I didn’t want to be, and that I had no one to blame but myself.

That failure informed me in ways that years of success never could. It told me something true about who I was at that moment. It made clear in terms that I couldn’t rationalize away, who I needed to become. You can learn a great deal from winning. But you learn far more from losing badly, especially when the loss is your own fault.

Whether you are a young professional or a grizzled veteran like me, professional failure can be your best friend. It can inspire you. It can inform you. It can help you grow. But only if you’re willing to look at it clearly—which, in my experience, requires a level of honesty and humility that doesn’t come easily and isn’t always comfortable.

Many of us are conditioned to manage perception. It’s what I do professionally, in fact. In business, there’s enormous pressure to project confidence, competence and control at all times. Failure disrupts that narrative. Thus, we spin it, or perhaps we bury it, or just blame someone else—anything to avoid sitting with the discomfort of having genuinely gotten something wrong.

Sobriety taught me a different way that’s been remarkably valuable in business.

It taught me that honest self-appraisal, however uncomfortable, is the only foundation for actual growth. You cannot fix what you won’t acknowledge. And that the people worth working with—the clients, colleagues, and collaborators who matter—respect accountability far more than they respect a flawless track record.

I am not what I’d call a finished product. The road to success is always under construction. I still make mistakes and still have moments where my first instinct is to defend rather than reflect. But sobriety helped me find a framework for failure that treats it as information rather than indictment—something to be examined and learned from rather than hidden and survived.

If you’re sitting with a professional failure right now—if you’re worried Blofeld is going to burn you in your chair—I’d offer you this: Don’t rush past it. Don’t manage it. Look at it. Ask what it’s telling you. The answer is probably uncomfortable. It’s also probably the most useful thing anyone has said to you in a while.