Joining me on this week’s episode is Erin Kennedy, the ethics committee chair for the PRSA Central California Chapter. She discusses a number of important topics, including:
- What to do when your boss wants to disclose information before you should
- How to better understand how those spreading misinformation think
Tell us more about yourself and your career.
I started my career as a print journalist more than 20 years ago. That’s when the Edelman Trust Barometer listed it as one of the most trusted professions and people actually turned to the news media and government for truth. I left it when that was no longer the case.
Since then, I’ve headed communications at the 49th largest school district in the nation, and I got the equivalent of what I joke around is the PhD in crisis communications there. I also have led the internal communications team and launched a public affairs newsletter and advertorial for a large hospital system in California.
Ethics and earning public trust is critical for both of those industries. In education, you’re entrusted with the care of other people’s kids, and 99% of your operations are supported by taxpayer dollars. In healthcare, you literally have people’s lives and health in your hands. Most nonprofit hospitals are supported by taxpayer-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid. So, ethics is a big deal, I would say.
What is the most difficult ethical challenge you ever confronted?
That’s difficult, because I have had so many, and I’ve learned from all of them.
One of my toughest ethical dilemmas was getting caught between wanting to get information out quickly to some parents who were worried about a health safety issue and also being sort of beholden and held back by Health Department experts who were ultimately the authority in charge of a situation.
My boss, who was not a PR practitioner, was pushing for immediate action and more disclosure, which could have perpetuated inaccuracies when you’re waiting for the experts. This is the same kind of ethical dilemma that I’ve encountered during crime scene investigations, which has happened at multiple workplaces where I’ve worked unfortunately – wanting to tell your side of the story about what’s going on to sort of reassure the public, but needing to defer to the authority and the ethics of that organization, which in this case was law enforcement who wanted radio silence until they wanted to talk about a situation. Law enforcement’s a no-brainer, the guy with the guns calls the shots.
The health department, an underfunded health department that didn’t get quite PR, was another thing altogether. That was a really tough one because patience isn’t always a virtue in PR. We’re sort of known as the action people, and action’s always critical in a crisis. But this was a case where I had to really advise that we take a pause and talk only to immediate families, which in this case was only a handful of curious elementary kids who had gotten too close to a potentially dangerous exposure. It was about handing people off to the health department, letting them, the experts, handle it and offering any support we could. Now, the rumor mill was going crazy. It’s the PTA, parents picking up kids, and they’re all talking. They were saying here’s another example of where the school district is not doing due diligence.
This was really something that could not have been prevented. I’m not going to go in too far into what it was, but it was curious kids basically. And that rumor mill just really had to wait until the health department weighed in on the actual risk and what the actual plan of action is. I had a boss who was wishing to really say more than you could, like, “Oh, it’s not a big deal. It’s being handled.” But we didn’t know if it was a big deal yet. We didn’t know how bad it was going to be or if it was something that could be passed on from one kid to another by contact.
This was an opportunity for me to remind people that the ethics and standards and practices of other organizations and industries have to be taken into account, and sometimes they take precedence over what our PR practices are. My big takeaway from this was you really have to know or learn fast about other industry ethics and standards and look at the situation through their lens. In this case, the health department was doing testing. They were consulting with state experts before making any decisions, and they were following their ethical protocols. In medicine, that’s the ethics. You don’t treat unless you have a good idea of what you’re treating or how to proceed, and you have standards of care. In both healthcare and education, there are really key ethical protocols about privacy of patients and privacy of students that go well beyond our normal PR practices of keeping client and organization confidentiality.
There’s an extra transparency that’s also required in those two industries when it comes to spending and billing and awarding contracts, etc. And as a PR advisor, you really need to know all of this or become best buddies with your compliance officer and your contracting leader and your legal team, because have to consult with them regularly before you can come up with a strategy and a plan and advise people. These are codes of ethics from other industries that you’ve got to factor into your approach and your writing and your advice.
That incident ended up not being as bad as anybody thought it was. But if we had rushed out to say, “Hey, not a big deal.” And then the health department had come back and said, “Oh no, this is a big deal. We’re doing some quarantine. We’re going to treat additional kids who were in contact with these kids,” it could have been a PR nightmare. That had me returning to PR 101 practices, which is to be… Saying a non-committal something is better than saying nothing really. You must reassure the public that something is being done, that some expert is handling the situation, that somebody is examining the situation and that they’re going to act to solve whatever’s going on in the interest of the public, and that you are going to tell people what you know as soon as you know it.
You’re hitting on one of the biggest challenges I see a lot of PR pros run into, and that’s the seeming conflict, even though it’s not, between disclosure information and safeguarding confidences. We’re supposed to say it, but we all have to keep some things confidential for a reason. How do you work to balance these imperatives when executives want to disclose?
Sometimes saying, “Hey, let me go find someone. Give me X amount of time. Let me go talk, see what I can find out from experts. And let me write something, a placeholder in the meantime, and get that to you.”
Giving leaders who are impatient, who want to go beyond what really can be said prudently and ethically is to write them something and then give them some assurance that you are taking steps to find out more, and that the placeholder statements could get beefed up, they could be expanded upon, but in meantime this could work to sort of buy time. I always think that taking that pause is really important to just take the time to really find out what’s going on. And that may be the old journalist in me wanting to know all the stuff about something.
A few previous guests have talked about practicing the pause or taking the critical 10, but you brought up another tool people can use. If you’re getting a lot of pressure “let me go check with legal and compliance.” There are very few executives that are going to say, “We don’t need to talk to the lawyers,” because they may be trained to think that way, they don’t always think about public relations in the same way and that can buy you the critical time.
That’s a really good tool. I always say, ” I’m going to go check X, Y, Z regulation,” which reminds them that there is one and there is another industry ethical standard that may be outside of what they remember that you have to check.
What are you seeing as the key ethics challenges for today and tomorrow?
This may be because we’re full on in election season, and it may be because I just listened to Michael Cherenson speak at the PRSA Ethics Group on inoculating the public and arming them with skills to be more skeptical of information, but I would really say one of our big challenges right now is the rampant dissemination of misinformation and intentional disinformation, and sort of those social media algorithms that kind of perpetuate them and limit exposure to other ideas, and ultimately the truth.
At Michael Cherenson’s urging, I’ve been playing the Harmony Square online game and pretending to be a disinformation officer to see how easily you can spread those rumors. As a former journalist, where my role was to be sort of a watchdog on democracy, I think this kind of a climate of disinformation and misinformation really erodes the public trust in basic institutions. Ultimately, when trust is eroded in public institutions, it erodes the work that we’re all doing, which is to really get to the heart and get good, ethical and transparent information out there.
I know a lot of people are saying, “Oh, AI, it’s going to ruin the industry.” But I have been watching for a couple of election cycles how it ramps up with a lot of dismay and just thinking…how do you get ahead of it? How do you make a difference in this climate? And I really appreciated the Inoculation Science website that Michael Cherenson shared, and just the idea of sort of pointing out the methods people use rather than the disinformation to make people a little more skeptical. So, I’m doing a little more research and studying on that. It’s something I care about.
I agree. It’s definitely one of the two top challenges. And as good as we are, we can all fall victim to it. I know at dinner the other night with my son at the kitchen table, I was saying something and he called me on it. He was right. I think I’m a savvy public relations executive, and I fel victim to misinformation. It’s a key challenge and the best advice I’ve heard still, because there’s no perfect solution, it goes back to good PR. It’s building that trust bank. It’s having the plans ready to go, so you’re not reacting to the crisis after it’s happened. You have the relationship with the key stakeholders already could help mitigate some of the risk.
Yeah, I say my kids live with two former journalists and they’re used to us saying, “What is your source?”
What is the best piece of ethics advice you’ve ever given?
I’m going to give you three quick ones, because I use all of them interchangeably.
One of my last bosses said, “Learn the facts before you judge.” And I would add, “Learn the facts before you write or advise anyone too,” because there’s always two sides and often multiple sides with different viewpoints and understanding that is critical.
The other one is stick to your core values and your code always. That’s a hard thing to do because sometimes sticking to your values means you have to walk away from an unethical situation. I always look for the win-win compromise first, but occasionally walking away is the only way to preserve your own ethics and reputation.
The third is to find a trusted advisor when you’re not sure. I’ve had a number of amazing ethical mentors starting with my journalism days, and I’ve been eternally grateful for them. I’ve tried to be that same trusted, ethical advisor for the students I mentor now at Fresno State.
I agree completely, and that’s one of the things I love that PRSA does is almost every chapter has an ethics officer. And while what you say is not attorney-client privileged, it’s a resource. Even if you don’t have somebody, it’s somebody who’s willing to stand up and take those phone calls and take those emails and help you work through these challenges.
Is there anything I didn’t ask you, Erin, that you wanted to highlight?
I could probably talk ethics all day, but I think I touched on one of the key things that I’ve learned to do over the years, which is really learn about your industry and the players in your industry and their codes of ethics, the things that govern the way they are acting, or at least should be acting, so that you can see things from their viewpoint and also not put them in a position where they have to push back because you’re making them violate their ethics.
Check out the full interview, with bonus content, here
- Why it’s important to know many codes of ethics – Erin Kennedy - September 9, 2024
- The Importance of Really Small Things – Capt. Barbara Bell, USN (ret) - May 28, 2024
- How to Deal with Biased Reporters – Missy Hurley - April 22, 2024
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