Hold onto your hat! I am going to make a confession so shocking that it will knock your hat off and rock your socks. So, I guess, you should hold onto your socks, as well.

Here goes: Sometimes, when I'm the only person in the break room, I will eat a piece of fruit without washing it first.

It's true! Even though I know all about pesticides and germs and rodent droppings and all the other really good reasons for washing fruit before you eat it, I still go right ahead and bite that apple, munch that pear and slurp that nectarine.

I'm not confessing this deviant behavior to brag about my daredevil lifestyle. I am coming clean about eating dirty fruit because I want to boost my career.

Used to be that if you wanted to rise up in the work force, you had to bury your secret sins, like the fact that you got your MBA from the back of a Wheaties box. But today we live in an age when people live their lives in front of TV cameras. If Paris Hilton and Spencer Pratt are your role models, and I know they are, how can you expect to emulate their success by hiding your dirty little secrets from the prying eyes of colleagues, co-workers and managers?

But don't take my word for it. Alexandra Levit, a career columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has recently penned a paean to the power of the public confession in a piece titled "Taking Risks to Boost Your Career." As Levit so rightfully writes, "Tough as it is for cautious people like me to accept, if you don't occasionally take calculated gambles, you won't get ahead as quickly as those who do. You will also never get over your fear of the unknown, and life will be predictable and dull."

Putting aside the pleasures of a dull, predictable paycheck for the moment, you have to agree that one way to turbocharge your career could involve unbuttoning your buttoned-up workplace persona to expose your inner blabbermouth.

Consider, for example, exhibit A -- the career of Penelope Trunk. Like yours truly, Trunk is a nationally syndicated columnist, but unlike me, Trunk "shocked the business community when she revealed intimate details of her personal life on her blog." Continued...