Mistakes happen. The question is what do corporations do when stuff hits the fan. Do they investigate what went wrong, or do they become the corporate equivalent of the three wise monkeys with a hear-no-evil, see-no-evil, speak-no-evil approach?

Try the latter. More and more corporations and institutions are avoiding investigations. They don't want to assign blame and they don't want to uncover material that might give critics ammunition for lawsuits, reports The New York Times.

Says Stanford professor Robert N Proctor: ''There is a lot more protectiveness than there used to be. It is often safer not to know."

A lot of this might be about avoiding litigation. But don't blame the lawyers. Other deeper organisational issues are at work too.


Avoiding the truth goes hand in hand with a culture that discourages people from speaking up. It's in line with workplaces that discourage people from speaking up, something I have already explored in an earlier blog.

And that might have a lot to do with the way today's modern organisation is structured. It says something about the internal organisational forces that stop managers from tackling the problem.

I have explored these issues in this piece here.