Most crises are about events. This one is about a person, which changes everything, because the ordinary crisis instincts produce injustice when applied to a human being.
An allegation arrives against somebody in the organization. It may concern conduct toward a colleague, toward a client or student, or the handling of money. It may be true, partly true, or mistaken, and at the moment it arrives you do not know which.
What follows is about how a leader holds the situation. It is not legal or investigative guidance. Anything of this kind involves specific obligations that vary by sector and jurisdiction, and the first call is to counsel, and where a child or vulnerable adult may have been harmed, or a crime may have occurred, the reporting obligations come before anything internal.
Two obligations that both feel absolute
The person who raised the concern is owed a serious response and protection from consequence for having raised it. The person named is owed a presumption that nothing is established and a fair process.
These are not in conflict as principles and they conflict constantly in practice, because acting on one looks like prejudging the other. A leader who moves decisively appears to have concluded guilt. One who moves carefully appears to be protecting somebody.
The resolution is procedural rather than substantive. You are not deciding the allegation. You are deciding what arrangement holds while it is examined, and saying so out loud to everybody involved removes most of the appearance of prejudgment.
The interim arrangement
Something has to happen immediately and it should be the least conclusive thing that adequately protects people.
Separation without judgment is usually available: changing reporting lines, altering a schedule, or paid administrative leave. Each protects the complainant and preserves every option, and none of them establishes anything about the person named.
Say plainly what it is. This is not a finding and it is not a penalty. It is what we do while this is looked at, and it applies regardless of what we eventually conclude. Said to the person, and said to anybody who notices the change.
The instinct to avoid disruption by leaving everything in place is the error that produces the worst outcomes, because if the allegation is substantiated, every day of inaction becomes part of the account.
The leader is not the investigator
The strongest instinct is to sort it out yourself, quickly and quietly, and it is nearly always wrong.
You know both people, which is exactly what disqualifies you. Your view of their characters will shape which account you find plausible, and you will not be able to see it happening. You are also the person who will have to act on the finding, and combining the roles means nobody can be confident the finding was reached independently.
Someone appropriately independent should establish the facts. For a small organization that may mean an outside professional, which costs money and is cheaper than the alternative. The leader’s job is to commission it properly, stay out of it, and act on what it finds.
What can be said, and to whom
Almost nothing can be said about the substance, and the temptation to explain will be considerable because the absence of information will be filled with speculation.
What can be said is procedural, and it is more reassuring than leaders expect. A concern was raised. It is being looked at by somebody independent. Interim arrangements are in place. Nothing has been concluded. We will act on the findings.
What must not happen is the thing that feels like candour: characterising the allegation, indicating what you personally think, or explaining the person’s side. Any of these prejudices the process, damages somebody who may be innocent, and will be quoted.
The complainant should be told what to expect and by when, and then actually told when that date arrives, including if the answer is that it is still ongoing.
Both outcomes require an act
Where the allegation is substantiated, act on it fully and promptly, including where the person is valuable and well liked. A finding followed by a diminished response teaches the organization exactly what its standards are worth, and the complainant learns that raising it achieved nothing.
Where it is not substantiated, the person named requires active repair. They have been through something that damaged them regardless of the outcome, and colleagues noticed the interim arrangement. Say clearly, to the people who need to hear it, that the matter was examined and nothing was found, and restore the arrangements immediately and visibly.
An unsubstantiated finding is also not evidence that the complaint was made in bad faith, and treating it as such is how an organization ensures the next person says nothing.
The thing that is being watched
Everybody in the organization is running one assessment throughout, and it is not about the individuals.
It is whether raising something serious here is survivable. That question is answered by how the complainant is treated over the following months, and the answer travels regardless of confidentiality.
Which means the outcome matters less to the organization’s future than the conduct of the process. An institution that handles a substantiated allegation well and a mistaken one fairly emerges more trusted than it was. One that handles either badly has taught everybody to route around it permanently.
Edited by Patrick J. Wolf, PhD