If you've avoided mentioning them to others because they've either put you on the spot or are embarrassing, you could be complicating things.

Over the past months you've avoided mentioning certain issues, hoping things would come together of their own accord.

If you just avoided mentioning yourself, the material would be somehow more objective and, therefore, more true.

But why go to all this trouble to avoid mentioning cottonseed oil if consumers were already knowingly buying it from other companies?

Avoiding mention of the war could be difficult, however.