Transparancy pitfalls

I learned a lesson today. I'm in telecom, among other things, and I tried to explain the rather technical and bureaucratic reason why some processes are what they are in telecom to a customer that isn't a) very technical and b) doesn't really care. My intent was to genuinely explain "why it was" and to be very transparent with the process and expectations. Instead, it just blew up in my face and the customer got frustrated and started asking all sorts of questions. I had opened Pandora's box with my tranparancy efforts.

I'm all for tranparancy, but it doesn't (shouldn't) get carte blache. Sometimes it's best just to say, "I'll take care of that for you...".