In a week where England and European nations backed an unprecedented boycott of FIFA’s World Cup over Gianni Infantino’s £15bn tournament sale, the Charity Commission was found in contempt of Parliament for trying to block scrutiny of its own safeguarding failures, and Ernst & Young was fined for failure to challenge, the question is not whether these institutions eventually responded to scrutiny. It is how much force it took to get them there.
when blocking scrutiny becomes the norm
Every week I sit with people whose organisations say one thing and do another. Some weeks that shows up in public. Repair starts when the consequences surface in private.
The Charity Commission went to court this month to stop the ombudsman laying its safeguarding failures before Parliament. It lost, and the Committee of Privileges found it in contempt.
Blocking scrutiny of your own failures is more common than you would think, and it is rarely because anyone is hiding anything. It is because inviting comment opens a forum for challenge, and no chair knows in advance what that will require of them.
Shutting things down doesn’t feel like avoidance from where you sit. It feels like productivity. The situation has a timetable. The lawyer provides an update at every meeting. There is an action plan against the recommendations and someone is working to keep everyone on task.
But expectations are shifting. Behaviour around your table changes after a year of not being asked whether you are doing the right thing in blindly following a process. When recommendations are presented they are accepted and everyone knows they will not be implemented. The director who used to ask the clarifying question stops asking it because he’s been gently encouraged to keep mum. The board ticks along as if everything is fine because, in truth, everything is fine as far as you can see.
Boards wait because they believe that conversation has to follow the legal process. It does not. A conversation held confidentially and without prejudice sits outside the evidence and can run alongside a formal process. What surfaces in it can be worked with but what remains unsaid cannot be addressed.
Inviting dissent is uncomfortable and it feels costly. But the true cost is not silence. It’s your organisation’s capacity to do what it said it would do.
So, the last time you were asked to make something go away, did you do it? Or did you choose to invite dissent?
If there are conversations your board needs to have like this, we can help you find a way forward: [email protected]
The WayFinders Group repairs the damage inside workplaces that stops organisations doing what they said they would.
your early warning detection system
TL;DR what did you say you would do? What did you actually do?
⬆ Up (who hit the mark this week)
UEFA’s 55 member associations voted unanimously to withdraw from FIFA competitions if Gianni Infantino proceeds with selling minority stakes in a $20bn company holding the World Cup's commercial rights; the first confederation ever to do so.
Solicitors Regulation Authority launched consultations requiring firms to give clients a timeline and regular updates when they complain, and to tighten rules on third party litigation funding, before anyone made it.
⬇ Down (who missed the mark this week)
Ernst & Young was fined £1,197,000 over the Made.com audit, having admitted it accepted management's forecasts without sufficient challenge months before the retailer collapsed.
Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust was downgraded from “outstanding” to “requires improvement” and issued with a warning notice; inspectors found staff did not feel safe to raise concerns.
👁 Watch (who we're watching this week)
Charity Commission was found in contempt of Parliament for going to court to stop the ombudsman laying reports on its safeguarding failures before the Commons; the board and chief executive apologised unreservedly but what next?
National Audit Office announced Michael Jary CBE as its new chair in January 2027.
repair in the wild
Where has July gone? It’s summer and I’m OoO. But this week:
I helped someone at the tail end of a grievance process outline to their public body employer what repair would look like: ways of working, relationships, boundaries, pay, location.
I helped a company whose relationship with a prospective partner’s advisor had broken down get the agreement across the line.
I helped repair trust between a regulated person and an interested party who could not move forward in an impossible situation.
ICYMI: I had an article published in IWA’s welsh agenda this week which you can read here:
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Leah Brown FRSA is Britain’s leading workplace repair expert, rebuilding your organisation's capacity to do what it said it would do.
