Where has the common sense gone?

Here we are… 2012, and ethics is still an issue in so many parts of our life.

But why do ethics take such an important place in public relations activities? How can practitioners develop their ethical approach to practice? Do journalists need to co-operate with PR practitioners at all?

Let's start at the beginning, ethical activities boost transparency, which leads to truth, trust and integrity. Consequently the reputation of public relations and your organisation depends on this. With the Leveson inquiry still looming in the background, and stories of the MP’s expenses scandal not too far away, it just goes to show how important transparent communication is in the contemporary public sphere.

Since the importance of transparent communication is becoming ever more apparent, now is the time that we, as responsible public relations practitioners can drive this issue forward and establish meaningful, open and honest dialogue for the organisation’s we represent.

Consider your last piece of poor customer service. From my experience, this tends to stem from an individual telling you that they ‘cannot’ do something. No further explanation. No consideration to your questions or your loyalty. Why was there no apology? Why was there no explanation? Why was there no indication of what they were going to do to resolve my problem? It is often a situation where common sense gets forgotten.

Okay, returning faulty items to a store might be a distance away from your stakeholder communication programme, for example, but it certainly follows a similar philosophy. This is particularly important when communicating in a crisis situation.

1. Be open and honest about success and when things do not go according to plan. Hiding when things go wrong can lead to sceptical analysis of your situation, where a simple explanation may suffice.
2. Always be prepared for the question, ‘why?’ Always find out the cause of the problem and be prepared to explain this openly. If you don’t provide an explanation you also leave yourself open to the wrong information being circulated. Present the facts for criticism, not rumours. If you are investigating the cause of the problem, say so, and issue the results of your findings afterwards.
3. Finally, how are you going to resolve this? Take control of the situation; be open about the way you are going to get back on track. Situation’s such as these aren’t necessarily failures, they are, as Philip Clarke of Tesco has rightly pointed out, opportunities to grow stronger than you were before.

Of course, this is highly condensed, but I hope you get the general idea behind this. For a more detailed look at how to communicate in a crisis I recommend reading the Institute for Public Relations article on this issue. The intention of this post was to give you some food for thought into how common sense can improve transparency in your communication activities.

However, it is important that graduates continue to learn the importance of this issue and maintain this philosophy as they move into employment. It is all too easy to get caught up in the need to gain only positive coverage and forget these principles of common sense. It was certainly reassuring to find that transparency was one of the top priorities for our intern from De Montfort University when she joined us. We will ensure this remains the same when she returns to her studies.