Candour (noun): the quality of being open and honest; frankness.
Not to be confused with candid, or indeed the yeast infection – though all three share an ability to make people deeply uncomfortable.
Before we go on (and I do), a small grammatical detour. Candid is the adjective – a candid conversation. Candour is the noun – she spoke with candour. But what about the verb? Well, there isn’t one. You cannot, in standard English, candour someone, or candid them. Which is perhaps why we reach instead for clunky constructions like “I want to be candid with you” or the now-ubiquitous “if I’m being honest.” See later for more on this.
This month I’ve been thinking about candour at a much bigger scale. Specifically, the proposed duty of candour – the so-called Hillsborough Law – and the enormous cultural shift that would be needed in the UK to actually make it mean something.
In case you don’t know, the Duty of Candour was proposed in the wake of the horrific cover-ups following the Hillsborough disaster, to ensure the state can never again conceal the truth from the families of victims. May I also mention, while we’re listing the occasions the state has comprehensively failed to be straight with people: the Post Office scandal, Thalidomide, contaminated blood, and the upcoming Orgreave inquiry. To name a few.
I have both a professional interest in this – organisational reputation, comms, PR, and the power/meaning and landing of words – and a rather too personal one, having had more contact with the police over the last four years than anyone would wish for. I am highly likely to start writing about this in great detail elsewhere unless things change for the better soon, so watch this space.
What’s prompted this current focused interest now is specifically the ongoing Nottingham Inquiry, plus the first report of the Southport Inquiry. Pick up any piece of coverage from any outlet, and you’ll find the same threads: ineptitude, obfuscation, and an appalling absence of candour at every level, from every institution. It’s infuriating to witness as a comms person. It’s just as infuriating as a human being.
And this is where we return to “if I’m being honest”. If you watch clips from the inquiries, you’ll also witness some of the participants even gallingly use the words ‘If I’m being honest’ as a preamble to whatever they’re about to say. In an inquiry. Convened specifically because nobody was being honest. Well – yes! That’s the least we expect of you. I know it’s a turn of phrase, but good grief, it’s a wholly inappropriate one in this context. Honesty shouldn’t need announcing, and if you feel the need to announce that you’re being honest, you’ve already told us something.
A board member at a former job once said to the team, during a particularly stressful period -unhinged boss = entire office on edge – something along the lines of: no one died, and no one will die. He’d been reading a book by a junior doctor, who’d pointed out that when doctors get things wrong, someone might die. Our board member had then rather generously applied that logic to our office situation. It wasn’t comparable. But for the police and medical professionals? It genuinely is. And that changes everything about the weight words must carry and the need to be honest when things do go wrong.
Another thread through both inquiries is the language and tone used in press releases and communications, including to the families of victims as well as to the press and public, which are so often clumsy, wrong, inappropriate, jargon-filled, and horrifically blunt given the circumstances. The language of apology without accountability is also its own form of dishonesty. Openness, frankness, clarity, transparency: these are not complicated concepts and yet it’s seemingly so difficult for organisations to operate with candour.
So much of what victims and families say they needed was simply the truth. Why is that so hard?
I am being very honest when I say that I am sceptical on two counts about the Duty of Candour. One: it’s a massive IF that the Duty of Candour becomes law at all. Two: even if it does, what difference will it really make? The cultural shift required from where we are now (and have been for years) is potentially just too great. History tells us so. And the College of Policing themselves say that the biggest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. Quite.
In some jobs – some very specific, very serious jobs – the truth isn’t optional. Full stop.