The Interested Voice

The issue Institutions prize an independent voice for the credibility their own lacks, then cannot resist shaping it until it speaks for them. Why it persists Where every speaker is presumed to argue from interest, honest counsel is discounted as self-serving, and the only voices believed are the ones that cannot be traced to anyone. What follows A voice is credible not because its author is neutral, but because its author answers for it; the question for any board is who will bear the cost if the advice is wrong.In June 2017 the board of AMP commissioned the law firm Clayton Utz to investigate how the company had come to charge customers fees for services they did not receive. The letter of instructions asked for ‘an external and independent investigation’, one that would be ‘entirely independent of the business’ (Hayne 2018, 145). By the time AMP presented the report to the corporate regulator, ASIC, in October, it had been through 22 drafts (Hayne 2018, 147). In the course of those…

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