Shall we give Seven West Media a 3 out of 10?

Life isn't black and white and often the path forward is as conflicted and anguished as the situation Channel 7 finds itself in the wake of the Tim Worner/Amber Harrison saga.

Let's start with the more clear cut, explore some of the more murky suppositions and identify some lessons for organisations wanting to do the right thing when the right thing in the world of scandal handle is so darn hard to get right.

Everything we've heard and read indicates the relationship between them was consenting thus despite the apparent power imbalance people are talking about, there was no sexual harassment.

Sexual harassment is unlawful. Regardless of how some of us many feel about them, extramarital relationships are not. Publicly listed companies are expected to conduct themselves ethically. Morality and ethics isn’t the same thing. If we could all be relied upon to exercise the same standard of morality and not a personal idiosyncratic one, then we would not need policies, procedures, organisational values, University ethics boards or the Fair Work Commission.

Footballers have danger clauses in their contracts. There is a prima facie connection with the nature of the job and what they do to get paid. Executives have morals clauses in theirs. Codes of conduct are bolted on to their contracts. Restrictive covenants exist to ensure those with positional power or referent power don't damage the organisation when they leave. There are routinely expectations they will not bring the organisation into disrepute. Well, that one would appear to have been breached. CEOs, boards and their chairs are expected to act in the best interests of the business.

What do you do when your CEO may have demonstrated very poor judgment but at the same time the market ponders his departure and the share price crashes? How does the board balance its responsibility for book value and shareholder return with its obligation to brand value and culture?

There is nothing in this sordid story to suggest that pillow talk was responsible for some commercial disadvantage or that either breached confidentiality in the context of their jobs. Having said that, there was nothing confidential about the saga once Ms. Harrison decided to send an email of her account to numerous media outlets which she knew would have leaped upon such a salacious high profile story with delight (particularly rival television stations).

We could get all self-righteous about the company's alleged offer/s of settlement to Ms Harrison but good old "commercial reality" means that companies do deals with employees all the time. This was as natural as breathing in the 80's and 90's. In my professional practice, I observed this declining in the early years of the Workplace Relations Commission but it's on the upswing as companies have again become risk averse about the lopsided rights that appear to be supported in Fair Work and if the rumours are true may have contributed to the resignation of its Deputy Commissioner Graeme Watson. In this Seven West situation, we could see the settlement as hush money and/or we could construe it as giving Ms. Harrison what she asked for and as some form of legitimate redress for any pain and suffering. In the first instance Ms. Harrison was paid a sum and continued in her job. Seven doesn't appear to have manufactured a reason to sack her. For reasons that seem confused they offered her a second amount later but failed to pay it. And that's when the "bomb" Ms. Harrison said she'd been carrying was armed.

If the Board knew about Mr. Worner's indiscretions and turned a blind eye as long as he performed in the job, then jumped to destroy this woman's character and mental health when things blew up, it is truly vile. Disgusting. It is also possible that in investigating any financial impropriety of the CEO to gather as many facts as possible with which to make any big decisions about his future, they had no choice but to investigate Ms. Harrison's use of company credit cards also if some of that expenditure occurred when they were together. However, imagine as a junior employee, wanting your company to follow through on an agreed settlement, finding yourself at the mercy of one of the Big Four accounting firms prying into every nook and cranny of your professional and personal finances. If this was deliberately designed to intimidate and dissuade her from any action, this would have been akin to the sort of intimidation and harassment used by British American Tobacco in their financial bullying of the family of the late Rolah McCabe who had sued them as a smoker for her cancer and died before any payout could be made.

I applaud the courage and ethics of Sheila McGregor who allegedly insisted the scope of the independent investigation by Allens Linklater include an examination of any potential misconduct by the CEO. Ms. Harrison says the investigation scope was too narrow and her interview superficial. As an investigator in countless grievances and reviews, I am well aware of the importance of the scope. Too narrow and you potentially get a "false negative". Too broad and the investigation starts to look like a witch hunt where the aim is not to seek the "truth" in relation to the critical issues that need a light shone on them, but the desire to dig up something. Anything. And then if your investigation uncovers a whole lot of extraneous information, facts and circumstances, what is relevant? What is significant? And what weighting do you give it in determining the outworkings of the matter?

It's too easy to simplify the situation and say Ms. Harrison became angry when she found out she may not have been the only target of extramarital attention by the attractive alpha CEO. The jilted lover/woman scorned tag is stereotypical and convenient and smacks of double standard bias. It's true that the big corporate isn't always wrong/corrupt and the "little person" isn't always reasonable, stable or lacking in opportunism.

Determining the appropriate response to performance issues is far easier than doing so with conduct. And even then, companies can muck that up. And often.

I don't profess to have all the answers and like everyone that reads this, I am relying on television interviews, the reporting of the situation riddled with bias and agendas; not on primary evidence nor interviews I conducted myself.

My job in these sorts of situations is often to ask a lot of questions and get clients to think broadly and deeply about the answers - and specifically about the culture they are prepared to fight for and the messages they are committed to sending to their staff and the marketplace.

What I do believe is that if we are to judge Ms. Harrison for seeking compensation in the aftermath of a consensual relationship and its associated consequences (including the likelihood she is rendered virtually unemployable henceforth), then we should judge the CEO and the Board, the custodians of culture in, at least, equal measure. Providing there was no inherent conflict of interests in the choice of investigator and the review was comprehensive and sound, Mr. Worner was reportedly not found to have committed misconduct. However, make no mistake. Allegations that are "unsubstantiated" are not necessarily without substance. There is just not enough evidence on the balance of probabilities to determine the reported events occurred. Unless Mr. Worner was Tour de France drug tested immediately before and after trysts with Ms. Harrison, how on earth would we ever know? Is it our business? No, it's not. But illicit drug taking if it happened, time spent on a huge salary 'sexting' a junior member of staff and allegedly admitting he could barely concentrate at work are issues for his Board. The Seven West Media Board is probably holding its breath to see if day to day developments make the CEO's tenure nonviable. Will there be a tipping point that means they feel obliged to take a different course of action, albeit reluctantly? Tim Worner may well keep his job. The news cycle will revolve. But we get the culture we deserve. We get the behaviour we're prepared to tolerate.

With all the complexity of such a story, to me the saddest and most disturbing elements beyond my concern for the reported fragility of Ms. Harrison's mental health and the impacts on Mr. Worner's wife and children are the following two questions.

1) How many other junior women and men will become casualties in the power and ego wars of the entertainment industry and corridors of corporate, seduced by the casting couch or the promise of promotions whilst being ever vulnerable to the real threat of victimisation?

2) And how many good people will have to resign their senior positions on principle, leaving behind those potentially most ill-equipped to make the most ethical decisions?