A New York Times story suggests that there is “increasing resistance” by corporations to internally investigate potential crises situations.
The story quotes a Stanford professor who uses the term “agnotology” to describe the new scholarly study of ignorance. “There is a lot more protectiveness than there used to be,” he says. “It is often safer not to know.”
I’m not certain this is a real trend, as internal investigations practices at many law and consulting firms seem to be booming. If it is, however, that means of a lot of companies are unfortunately stuck on this myopic idea that what you don’t know can’t hurt you. But in the post-Enron information economy, strategic ignorance isn't an insurance policy. It’s a risk.
From Enron to BP, we see the headlines every day. Let the public think a company consciously decided to not know the truth, and fixable operations problems become allegations of arrogance and negligence. Isolated incidents become firestorms about the company’s credibility, integrity and accountability.
The cost of a crisis is ultimately determined by how a company reacts to it. Choosing not to know about it in the first place may be the worst reaction of all.
(And yes, I remain completely ignorant as to which universities will be offering degrees in agnotology this fall.)
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