“We’re Holding an Internal Investigation”

“It's so much easier to suggest solutions when you don't know too much about the problem.”  - Malcolm Forbes

Have you ever noticed that whenever something happens, some group, enterprise, agency or government department immediately declares that they are going to hold an internal investigation?  The police do it.  Professional organizations do it.  Our governments do it.

Their argument seems to that “ordinary” people would not understand the intricacies of what they do.  The fact that juries of “ordinary” people preside at trials, both criminal and civil, some of which can be quite complex, does not seem to shake their resolve that only “their” people can preside in these cases.  In most cases, this is the last you will ever hear of the issue in question.  Oh, there are cases where the results must be revealed for legal reasons, but this seems to be the exception rather than the rule.

What got me thinking about this issue was a recent incident in Ottawa wherein a city transit driver drove her bus through a red light and collided with a passenger car.  The transit driver was given a ticket for running a red light, but the reasons why she might have done such a thing was immediately blanketed by an internal investigation.  Of course as soon as this happens there can be no further talk of the incident because of “privacy” rules and because “we are holding an internal investigation”.  

“In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
  - George Orwell

But it is the type of thing we see all the time.  Now, I’m not accusing any of these agencies of any wrongdoing, but you really have to wonder if the whole truth really comes out of these inquiries.  Are things withheld because of a perception that the public would not understand the nuances of a position or decision?  Are the internal investigations held so that outsiders with legitimate questions that could embarrass the inquirers can be kept out? Are they held so that the truth can be “manipulated” to protect the organization or some individual? I, of course, don’t know the answers to these questions, but the fact that I have to ask them indicates the suspicion that arises from these investigations.  In most cases, these investigations are held behind closed doors so the public has no way of knowing the process, or in many cases, the outcome.  In some cases the report comes out with a set of recommendations, but with no analysis of what actually happened during the incident itself. 

Now this may sound like the old saw, “I’m not paranoid, but everyone is out to get me”, but I just think that a lot of these investigations could be carried out in a more transparent manner.  After all, we are supposed to live in an open society.  That’s what our secretive federal government tells us, anyhow.

“The public will believe anything, so long as it is not founded on truth.”
  - Edith Sitwell