An organisation reveals its standards in the behaviour it tolerates while nobody is watching.
In my last column, I wrote about the importance of establishing an organisation's essence before a crisis arrives, so that leadership is not left inventing what it stands for under pressure. That idea only holds if the essence is genuine; if it describes how the organisation behaves rather than how it would like to be described. This column is about what happens when it isn't and when an organisation's real standards turn out to be whatever it has spent years quietly tolerating.
When leaders accept known misconduct and then express outrage upon its exposure, they reveal how much more seriously they take damage to their bottom line than harm to others. For communication professionals asked to manage the consequences, that distinction goes to the heart of our own responsibilities.
Many years ago, while conducting an internal communication audit for a client, I identified behaviour that would damage the organisation if it became public. There was a reputational risk, certainly. But the behaviour itself was unacceptable and needed to stop regardless of whether anyone outside the organisation ever discovered it.
That judgement determined the work that followed: outlining the extent of the issue with the client, discussing its impact on stakeholders, then stamping out the practice and engaging the workforce in change, with communication supporting it at every step.
The organisation publicly acknowledged the unacceptable practice and explained what it was doing to address it. By bringing the problem and the response into the open together, it removed the prospect of exposure revealing something it was trying to conceal. In my assessment, its reputation was enhanced, because it had demonstrated a willingness to confront its own shortcomings and act on them.
That experience has stayed with me because it illustrates where crisis communication can make its most valuable contribution. Once the organisation accepted that the behaviour had to change, we had a credible course to explain and defend. Had we concentrated on keeping it quiet, the underlying problem would have remained intact, and the organisation's reputation would have depended on continued cover-up.
Familiarity replaces judgement and misconduct becomes business as usual
This ethical distinction becomes blurred when misconduct settles into business as usual. A practice can be familiar, profitable, and tolerated by influential people without becoming any more acceptable. Familiarity simply dulls the willingness to challenge it. By the time exposure produces an urgent demand for action, the organisation may have spent years accommodating the conduct it now wishes to condemn.
The Hayne Royal Commission into banking demonstrated how deeply misconduct could become embedded in ordinary business arrangements. Its findings showed how incentives rewarded sales and profit without adequate regard for whether those results were achieved properly, allowing behaviour that potentially harmed customers to serve the interests of institutions and the individuals they rewarded.
The significance for our profession extends well beyond banking. Misconduct can become part of a successful business model long before it becomes a reputational crisis, particularly when those benefiting have the influence to discourage uncomfortable questions.
Should it really take a royal commission to give that knowledge weight? Knowledge of harm ought to be sufficient on its own.
Where the pattern repeats
AFL presents a related challenge through recurring misconduct away from the ground, including disrespect towards women. The AFL Players' Association has itself raised concerns about cultural change, consistency of sanctions, and accountability across different levels of leadership, equating corporate values with individual responsibility.
Recurrence alone does not establish that a club or the League has condoned misconduct. But it does make another apology, or another education programme, an insufficient measure of progress.
Supporters are entitled to expect that football administrators' commitment to respect governs everyday decisions, including those involving players whose value makes enforcing standards competitively inconvenient.
The same responsibility rests with highly paid executives and partners in advisory firms whose business depends on others trusting their judgement. They command substantial fees for helping clients manage obligations and risks, which makes any willingness to bend their own standards difficult to excuse. Where senior people knowingly tolerate misconduct because it generates revenue, commercial success cannot serve as both their reward and their defence.
Politicians carry a comparable responsibility, because the money, appointments, and influence at their disposal belong to the public. Treating parliamentary expenses as a personal benefit to be maximised, or government positions as rewards for loyalty, betrays that responsibility. An assurance that an arrangement fits within the rules doesn't answer whose interests it serves, particularly when those benefiting can also shape the rules.
The practitioner's line
Across every one of these settings, the troubling pattern is the same: exposure supplies an urgency that the conduct itself failed to generate.
For people who have already suffered the consequences, it must be particularly galling to watch an organisation mobilise resources to defend its reputation, having shown so little interest in addressing their experience.
Communication advisers enter these situations under pressure to restore confidence, sometimes from leaders who have no intention of changing the arrangements that produced the problem. That is where professional judgement becomes uncomfortable, because challenging the brief can mean challenging the person who approves your budget, determines your promotion, or pays your account.
The communication professional's role becomes concrete when asked to defend the expenditure, announce the appointment, or explain a former minister's move into a related industry. Before describing a selection as merit-based, or a conflict as properly managed, we need evidence that supports those claims. We cannot determine every decision. But we can challenge the advice being sought, and we can refuse to manufacture a respectable explanation for an arrangement whose real purpose we know to be otherwise.
A communication adviser brought into any of these situations needs to establish one thing early: does the organisation intend to change the practice, or merely its public explanation?
Management owns the decision, but we become responsible for the account we help present. Agreeing to describe known, recurring misconduct as an isolated lapse makes us participants in the concealment.
The request for concealment seldom arrives in those terms. It emerges through revisions that remove inconvenient history, describe recurring conduct as an isolated lapse, or announce corrective action without any substance behind it. A statement may contain individually defensible sentences while still leaving readers with an impression the organisation knows to be false. Our responsibility extends to that impression, not just the sentences.
Confidentiality and fair process remain essential, particularly where allegations are untested or individuals need protection. They do not justify manufacturing uncertainty around established facts, or using an investigation to postpone action already warranted. Responsible advice explains that distinction and gives leadership an honest, workable course to follow.
When that advice is rejected, the practitioner should identify precisely what is misleading and record the concern. Where necessary, they should then take it to an appropriate level of oversight beyond those directing the response. If continued involvement requires a false account, or promises everyone knows will not be honoured, refusing the work may become unavoidable.
Agency owners and communication leaders carry a particular responsibility here. Expecting a junior practitioner to defend professional standards while senior colleagues preserve the commercial relationship makes a mockery of the principles we claim to uphold.
Ethical advice needs support.
Action outlasts the headlines
Looking back at that client assignment, the lasting lesson is that acknowledging a problem and explaining credible action can strengthen an organisation in ways concealment never will. The communication worked because the organisation was prepared to change. That gave its public position a foundation in what it was doing.
That should remain our measure of success once the headlines subside. An organisation that resumes the same behaviour has merely recovered its comfort, however skilfully its reputation has been defended. Our contribution is worth more when it helps establish standards that operate without an audience, so that doing the right thing no longer depends on being caught.
Douglas Wright is Chief Executive Officer of Wrights, providing strategic counsel to boards and executives navigating complex reputational, stakeholder, governance and public policy challenges.
With more than four decades experience, he has advised leading corporations, industry bodies, government agencies and not-for-profit organisations across Australia and internationally. Prior to establishing Wrights, he founded and led Ogilvy PR Australia.
Douglas is Deputy Chair and a Fellow of Communication and Public Relations Australia (CPRA), a Chartered Public Relations Practitioner (UK), a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and a Certified Practising Marketer.
He combines commercial judgement, strategic insight and an ability to shape outcomes in complex environments.
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