A Lesson in Transparency

I am guessing I was around 7 or 8 years of age at the time. It was a summer day and I had nothing to do and no one to do it with. As a die-hard little leaguer, I finally came up with the idea of practicing my pitching skills by throwing a rubber ball against the side of a wall that ran parallel to our neighbor's house. I remember being impressed with how fast I could throw the ball. Unfortunately, it would have been better if I had focused more on my accuracy. In one of my pitches I missed the wall and threw the ball through one of my neighbor's basement windows. The sound of the shattering glass was like an explosion. I stood motionless not knowing what do; yet was fully aware that I was going to get in trouble due to my carelessness and inaccuracy. Finally, I bolted from the scene and ran to the opposite side of our house to hide. This was not my shining hour.

Perhaps if I had had an ethical public relations professional to guide me, then I would have not fled the scene. As outlined in the Public Relations Society of America's code of ethics, one of the benefits of having an ethically-driven professional communicator on board is to help keep a spotlight on the organization or entity for whom they work and on the executives to whom they report. Yes, the communicator is on the pay roll of the organization, but at the same time a key part of this professional's job is to maintain open lines of communication between that entity and the internal and external publics to which it strives to connect. Transparency is the key. Does this mean the public relations professional should publicize every misstep an organization or a CEO makes? No. But it does advocate openness and honesty as opposed to cover-ups and half-truths. A range of strategies exist that can be initiated to maintain this kind of transparency: public forums, internal newsletters, annual reports, press briefings and staff meetings are a few examples. Publics need to have ongoing opportunities to obtain information and communicators need to do what they can to ensure those opportunities remain viable, constant and timely. This is a never-ending challenge but the pay-off is enduring credibility and public support.

Postscript: Come to think of it, I actually did have two communicators with me on the summer day I broke my neighbor's window. They were my parents. After the incident, it did not take Mom and Dad long to tell something was troubling me. It took them even less time to learn what that "something" was. They had me confess my misdeed to our neighbors and then reimbursed my neighbor for the expense of having to replace the window. My parents deducted money from my allowance to reimburse them. This meant I had to go awhile without being able to buy new comic books, but, hey, no one ever said transparency comes without sacrifice.