Silence is also a statement

Clients sometimes ask whether they can simply say nothing. The honest answer is yes, and that it is sometimes the right thing to do. The less comfortable part of the answer is that silence is not the absence of a statement. It is a statement, and other people will decide what it means.

When an organisation says nothing, observers fill the gap with the most plausible explanation available to them. Sometimes that is “they are waiting for the facts”, which is fine. More often it is “they have something to hide” or “they do not care”, which is not.

Choosing silence

If silence is the right course, it should be chosen deliberately, for reasons that can be written down, and reviewed at fixed intervals. We record it in the matter file exactly as we would an approved line: “No comment at this stage. Reason: the investigation has not yet established the cause. Review: 18.00.”

There are good reasons for silence: legal proceedings, the privacy of individuals, an investigation that would be prejudiced, a regulator that has asked for it. There are also bad ones, chiefly the hope that the matter will go away. It occasionally does. When it does not, the organisation has to explain not only what happened but why it said nothing, and the second explanation is usually harder than the first.

Saying that you will not say

The best form of silence is often a short statement that explains it: “We will not comment while the investigation is under way, because commenting could affect it. We will say more when it has finished.” That is a statement about silence, and it gives observers the explanation instead of leaving them to invent one.