I hope we’re ready to return to having an adult conversation about the sources of our gadgets.

A week and a half ago, the foremost critic of outsourced manufacturing was exposed as a bit of a fraud. Monologuist Mike Daisey had made up some of his alleged findings about factories in China that build Apple’s devices, American Public Media’s Marketplace reported.

This American Life, the Public Radio International-distributed show that had given Daisey a prominent microphone in a January episode titled “Mr. Daisey And The Apple Factory,” retracted that show and devoted its next episode to unpacking how it got this story so wrong.

It turns out that–contrary to Daisey’s statements to TAL and in his one-man show “The Agony And the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs” that I saw a year ago in Washington–Apple contract manufacturer Foxconn does not have armed guards outside its factories. Workers are not crammed into surveillance-camera-infested dorms as Daisey described. His story of meeting a man whose hand was crushed in a machine used to make iPads didn’t check out either.

After an an initial non-apology, the New York-based artist offered a more contrite statement Sunday, writing that “I will be humble before the work.”

If you think that will end the outsourcing discussion, I have a compelling anecdote from my 2007 vacation in China to sell you.

I would rather see these revelations get us past an argument over which company is more evil–where we seemed to be heading when Daisey was hectoring tech journalists about how to do their jobs.

It hasn’t helped that so much of this discussion has centered around one company with a) a habit of secrecy, b) a widely-perceived ability to mass-produce magical things, and c) far bigger profit margins than most competitors.

Apple didn’t invent outsourced manufacturing. But its experience responding to criticism of its practices has lessons for other companies that will wind up answering the same questions–questions that customers are entitled to ask.

Since 2007, Apple has been posting reports about the audits it’s conducted of its suppliers. As I wrote after seeing Daisey’s show, its oldest reports painted a sunnier picture of things than more recent updates.

In successive years, however, Apple has stepped up its disclosure. Not long after an unsettling report by the New York Times in January about industrial accidents at its contract factories in China, the Cupertino, Calif., firm announced that it was joining the Fair Labor Association, allowing that organization to inspect those facilities on its own.

In short, Apple seems to be realizing that the story of its products has to include how they were made.

(Disclosures: I’ve bought a lot of electronic hardware, Apple’s included, but don’t want any of it made at the cost of somebody’s life, health, or liberty. I don’t believe anybody at the Consumer Electronics Association thinks otherwise; see, for example, CEA president Gary Shapiro’s op-ed for Investor’s Business Daily, advocating better disclosure and accountability for overseas manufacturing.)

Some other vendors have not leaned as heavily on contract manufacturers. For example, my friend Wayne Rash wrote admiringly last month in eWeek.com about how Motorola owns its factories but audits them anyway and posts the results on its site.

But in that same piece, Rash also noted that “a surprising number of device manufacturers really don’t want to talk about the issue.”

That matches my experience. I had two queries to company reps for this post go unanswered, and a long chat on background with an industry executive I’ve known for over a decade yielded a similar point: This isn’t something many people are ready to brag about.

Sure, bragging might be unseemly. But at a minimum, companies should have an answer for curious consumers, and at many of their sites it’s difficult to find one. You may need to skim a lengthy PDF to get the vaguest sense of where its gadgets  or components came from.

Things don’t have to be that way.

The grocery industry provides one alternative. You can not only choose to buy locally-sourced foods or “fair trade” items from overseas, but places like Whole Foods make those options a core selling point.

That could be a tall order for the electronics industry to match: Startups and other niche producers can boast about building their hardware in the U.S., but the massive scope of the global electronics market often demands the volume production only available in city-sized factories overseas. But as a customer, I want to be confident that these facilities comply with documented health, safety and pay standards.

If companies don’t have a good story to tell when people ask, that’s a problem they need to fix first. But in this case, doing good is necessary but no longer sufficient; you can’t leave a would-be buyer guessing about your virtues.