Mckinsey’s sin of ‘admission’

Just another meaningless corporate mea culpa

Did you notice the striking similarity between Mckinsey’s long-overdue Eskom statement and KPMG International’s statement on its Gupta-related work? Neither really admitted to any wrongdoing, bar the odd lapse in standards and judgment.

So similar are they, it’s possible they were crafted by the same legal team. Or perhaps these sorts of nonadmission admissions are like wills, and there are standard forms that can be bought off the shelf at CNA. (Given the growing demand for them there could be a business opportunity here.)

Former institutions and figures of authority are dropping all over the place. Politics and politicians are long gone, as are religion and religious figures. The legal profession is just a leak or two away from public calumny.

And even that artificial construct, Hollywood, looks to be toppling.

Included in Mckinsey’s “errors of judgment and process” was its failure to “engage adequately with advocate [Geoff] Budlender”. This is dealt with in a particularly mean-spirited legal manner, giving the impression Budlender — who was tasked with investigating Trillian — might have been overly fussy about the whole affair.

In all, Mckinsey’s “admission” statement is likely to go down about as well as KPMG’S did. It is remarkable that firms that make their living out of carefully crafted strategic advice have produced such sloppy defences.

But did you also notice the similarity between the statements by Mckinsey, KPMG and US film producer Harvey Weinstein? Weinstein seems to have acknowledged some inappropriate behaviour but has consistently denied nonconsensual sex — despite the growing number of actors who have come forward with charges.

It is likely that bullying was so much a part of Weinstein’s personality — and was so accommodated by the people around him — that he did not know when he was forcing women to do something so vehemently against their will. That’s an even more chilling thought than the possibility that he is knowingly lying about it.

So, obviously the thing about these legally crafted “admissions” is to ’fess up to something not terribly offensive — for big corporate advisory firms that would be substandard work, for big film producers that would be overexuberance — and assume your former position of authority will win the day for you.

But here’s the thing: no matter how many PR firms and lawyers are thrown at this exercise, it’s just not working any more.

Even if there’s no finding of guilt in court, public opinion, hyped by social media, has found these people guilty. It’s often an ugly and vicious process, but it is the inevitable result of the systemic abuse of the public’s trust.

Central to that abuse has been the excessive use of lawyers. They may have helped in the past but, like antibiotics, overuse has led to a growing resistance to their effectiveness.

We are lurching towards a postauthority era, which seems a little scary. Hopefully in future we will be more circumspect about who we place our trust in.

The thing is to ’fess up to something not terribly offensive and assume your former position of authority will win the day for you