This post by Adam Lishinsky is part of a series in which LinkedIn Influencers share the best advice they’ve ever received. Read all the posts here.

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I was 25 years old, had recently returned to my hometown, Chicago, from Washington D.C., and was working for a far higher-profile publication within my company, the scrappy financial newsweekly Crain’s Chicago Business. Crain’s is where I learned to be a newsman. It competed against the weak business section of the Chicago Tribune, a paper we internally referred to as “the big, white, fluffy pillow.” We delivered scoops and analysis. We practiced what’s known as point-of-view journalism, the notion that while there may very well be multiple sides to a story, only one of them typically rings true. (The POV approach is consistently confused with opinion journalism, and there’s a big difference: Delivering the proper analysis is not the same as rendering an opinion, particularly a partisan or ideological opinion.)

In short, Crain’s had swagger. I had swagger too, but as I mentioned, I was 25. I had a lot to learn. One of my first assignments was to write a feature story about the oil company Amoco. No one much remembers or cares, but Amoco had a proud history. It once was known as Standard Oil of Indiana, one of the companies split off from John D. Rockefeller’s conglomerate. It was originally headquartered in an old skyscraper on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, and it’s where my father started his career as an economist in the 1950s. Standard Oil later built the glorious white skyscraper in the North Loop that locals called “Big Stan.” That building became the Amoco Building when Standard Oil changed its name, and later still took on the name of the insurer Aon after Amoco sold itself to British Petroleum.

But back in the early 1990s Amoco was a Chicago-based global, integrated oil company, meaning that it did it all: exploration & production, refining, and retailing (aka gas stations). I set out in my earnest suit and oversized glasses to interview Laurance Fuller, the white-haired CEO of Amoco. It was a thrilling and intimidating experience, interviewing such a seasoned executive, mindful of the yawning gap between his knowledge of the oil business and mine. (It was a powerful lesson on the importance of brand; I was there because of the prestige of Crain’s, despite the inexperience of Adam Lashinsky.) Somewhat awed though I was, I clearly remember our photographer, a seasoned photojournalist, asking Fuller to sit down on the floor of his office near a glass coffee table so she could get the shot she wanted. He complied, and the photo was great.

My story was another matter. I can’t really remember the point, other than that global oil prices had collapsed, rendering Amoco’s exploration strategy a disaster. (Low prices leave little room for error in drilling for oil and gas; This chart confirms my memory.) I assume I wrote about how Fuller was trying to pivot the company. What I’ll never forget was the reaction of my editor on the story, Bob Reed, who called me over to his desk to walk me through the story’s many problems.

Reed didn’t mince words. “Here’s the deal,” he started. “From having talked to you, I think I know what the story is here. I know you know what the story is here. I promise you the people at Amoco know what the story is here.” Then he moved on to the crux of the matter. “The only people who aren’t going to know what the story is are the readers, because you’re not telling them,” he said. “Stop being afraid of what Amoco is going to think about this, and go back and re-write it so that you’re sharing what’s really going on with the readers.”

To the outside observer and with the passage of time, Reed’s advice seems so straightforward. But to a scared cub reporter, it was an epiphany. He was teaching me in the best possible way that I needed to set aside my feelings for my subjects and how I perceived they would react and to think instead about my responsibility to the only customer that mattered to us, the reader. I needed to tell them directly what the situation was—not my opinion, but rather what I learned during the course of my reporting. Another influential editor, Joe Nocera, years later at Fortune would tell me to me think about a profile subject as “material,” not as a person, at least during the period of time that I was trying to craft an article about them.

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To read the complete article and check out others that Adam has written, please click here.

Adam Lashinsky is a Senior Editor At Large for Fortune Magazine, where he covers technology and finance. He is also a Fox News contributor and frequent speaker and moderator. Prior to joining Fortune, Lashinsky was a columnist for TheStreet.com and the San Jose Mercury News. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter. His most recent book, Inside Apple: How America’s Most Admired–and Secretive–Company Really Works, was published by Business Plus and reprinted in 2013. In my opinion, it is a “must read” even if you have little (if any) interest in Steve Jobs and/or Apple.

Here is a link to my interview of him.