I never cease to be amazed by the way managers, executives and employees lower down the food chain routinely avoid confronting the crunch issues and problems.

In the case of corporate cot-cases like Enron and WorldCom, it had resulted in malfeasance on a grotesque scale. But the silence can also kill vital projects. And the project failure rate is high.

There are five crucial conversations that need to be taken, according to a joint study by VitalSmarts and The Concours Group.

These conversations have to be around realistic planning, making sure sponsors are doing their job, making sure people aren't avoiding the problems, getting people to speak up when there are issues and ensuring the team has what it takes to keep working together.

In other words, the five conversations are about fact-free planning, AWOL sponsors, skirting, project chicken, and team failures.

"These concerns are more common than most senior leaders realize; 90 percent of project managers routinely encounter one or more of these five concerns-and nearly one in five projects are plagued by all five. But the problem isn't that these concerns are common; in fact, they may be an inevitable part of any large strategic implementation. The problem is that those who encounter these problems don't effectively confront and resolve them."

But how powerful are these forces. They are exactly the same as the ones confronting whistleblowers.

The operations of most organisations are built around rules and procedures that censor and filter information. Speak up and you are labelled a "complainer" or worse still, a "troublemaker".

It is something that Harvard Business School's Chris Argyris calls "undiscussables'' in his work, and it is a force that I explore in this blog here.