It must be the worst feeling in the world to get a call like this;
“Hi this is John Smith from the Financial Telegraph and we would like to speak to you about a cover up in your organisation. We are running a story tomorrow and are offering you the chance to comment …. “
We can all think of the household names that have been caught in the cross-fire of scandal recently and I am sure we all have a view on how it could have been handled better.
The truth is, that once a concern is raised externally, the ability to investigate, evaluate, report, remedy and improve controls is out of the company’s hands. It is full on firefighting mode and decisions made in the heat of incident management are rarely long term strategically aligned to an entities values and mission statement.