I don’t like to criticize and style is subjective, so I will delete this post if I get a few DVs… i am not yet sure of the SE etiquette.

I couldn’t understand your sentence at first, it took me several attempts to re-read it as well as the clarification of the answers to SEE what you were trying to describe. You may get some insights at
What's the difference between purple prose and vividly descriptive writing?

”Whilst John was puffing his chest out,”

Not getting the image, you need to make us imagine the chest expending, bursting out of the seams, saying
“puffing” is not enough

”getting all hot under the collar,”

You are telling us, you need to SHOW us the sweat driping, the damp collar, the redness of his cheeks..

“and not doing anything specific to exonerate himself, Lana witnessed Terrence,”

not visual and unclear, all mental

”stood in John's shadow, moving deeper and deeper”

SHOW us movement, SHOW us shadow and dept, make us yearn or fear the shadow, make it a living entity, give it character, bring life to it

” in to what she perceived as guilt, at least for his part, in the crime.”

Telling, not showing entirely mental

Above all use SHORT sentences mixed with some medium ones and only rarely long sentences to create rhythm, else you drown the reader in a sea of words

This whole excerpt doesn’t seem visual at all to me, it is very much telling and noting shows. If it is representative of your writings, you may want to train yourself to be more visual like by writing movie scripts for instance.

Sorry for the harsh critique, what works for one reader may not work for another.

QUESTION

To go back to the original question, I believe that showing is ALWAYS better than telling. Telling should be used only when there is not choice.

Here you do have ample choice, it is visual, even the guilt can be SHOWN, implied or indirectly situationaly made apparent rather than telling us.

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