Public or Private:
Institutions Need Communications Ethics
Author's Note: This article was written on July 29, 2001 prior to the key events that have defined personal and professional life in the subsequent decade: 9-11 and the current fiscal debacle. At that time I was an adjunct faculty member University of St. Thomas Graduate School of Business, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA, and the past president Public Relations Society of America, Minnesota Chapter. The company referenced was a major health care system, providing relevance in light of America's current bold health care initiative. I have added it to my Schaefer Communications website as well.
Allina Health System responded to the investigation of its operations by hiring outside communications consultants. Articles in the Star Tribune raised issues about the merits of this practice; a subsequent commentary piece struck an apologist chord for communications consulting.
Both parties miss the point. The real consideration is not whether organizations hire external expertise, the issue is about ethics, the role of professional communications, and the public’s right to know. Imbedded here is a sublime irony in the intense scrutiny of public organizations and relative disregard of private companies.
Professional communicators are in a unique position to guide overall decision-making at all levels of organizations, whether as insiders or outside counsel. A practitioner’s purest role is to track and analyze global and local issues, attitudes and trends, aligning the policies and procedures of an organization accordingly.
How do they do this? As was the case with Allina’s outside counsel, they use internal and external research, analyze the data, make recommendations that detail the impact of actions on the organization, and design communications programs to implement these recommendations, including how to respond to the media.
However, if Allina had and/or used a qualified senior communications officer in an executive management position of equal power and standing with its legal, financial, and operations executives, it could have avoided the problems that sparked the controversy to begin with. Hiring outside counsel to help in a crisis isn’t wrong. Allina’s seeming lack of dependence on ongoing ethical executive-level public relations practice is.
Lack of full and open disclosure about their operational practices, failure to cooperate with authorities, the arrogance of top management, are all aspects of the organization’s poor public relations. And least your reading public think that Mr. Quimby’s commentary speaks for our profession, it is never our role to “push the bounds” in any direction that is outside that of the public interest!
Many communications professionals, particularly those who choose the voluntary public relations accreditation (APR) offered by such national organizations as the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), are committed to a professional Code of Ethics that includes such precepts as: “conducting their professional life in accord with the public interest; never intentionally communicating false or misleading information; and never engaging in any practice which corrupts the integrity of the channels of communications or the process of government.” It is their role to insure that the organizations they serve follow suit.
Unfortunately, it seems that Allina and many organizations use their professional communicators as mere order takers rather than the reputation managers they are trained to be. Worse, many practitioners aren’t trained or don’t adhere to these standards.
Professional communicators use methodology and theory from such social sciences as sociology, anthropology and psychology, to determine human behavior. They study journalism, economics and organizational development. The best and brightest are trained to think and anticipate. It is their job to help organizations link and apply their findings to the legal, operational and economic aspects of the organization. This advice and counsel provides the ultimate vehicle for organizational success because it directs its gaze outside the organization and holds high an ethical perspective.
Yet, what makes the news are the misuses or transgressions of the profession. As in any field, there are good and bad public relations practitioners and good and bad public relations practice.
This gets us back to the question about public vs. private disclosure. It is naïve to demand less from private institutions than from public ones. How outdated this mindset seems. The very technology that many private organizations use to their marketing advantage holds the equal and opposite disadvantage (their view) for full and open disclosure of operations. Only the most proprietary data need be protected in our information-driven world.
Forward thinking CEOs understand that reasonable maximum disclosure creates trust with their multiple constituencies. Trust leads to credibility. And credibility builds a positive reputation or image. Nothing sells their products, services or stock better than a positive reputation. Communication professionals are uniquely trained and qualified to serve the role of reputation manager within an organization. Bringing such counsel into the mix as part of business as usual will keep organizations more in the favorable court of public opinion and less in the expensive courts of law.
