Ethics
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The Importance of Visibly Ethical Leadership in Organisations
Assuming others see you as ethical because you believe yourself to be is a critical leadership error. Ethical leadership requires visible modelling, intentional communication, and alignment between actions and values. Without this, leaders appear ethically neutral—creating distrust, disengagement, a
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Skin in the Game Is Now the Law, Yet Nothing Has Changed
Australia already has the machinery for real accountability—Hayne's findings, the Financial Accountability Regime's own published design, et al. What it lacks is the will to switch it on, because the people who can are the very people it would bind. On the law we possess but struggle to use.
The Commons
The Price of Everything
The demand to measure the return on our ethics is not a problem to be solved but a symptom to be read. On why pricing virtue corrupts it—and why a firm that can measure the return on its integrity has already begun to spend it.
The Commons
Giving Bad News, Badly
Bad news rarely breaks trust; bad delivery does. Too often managers turn necessary cuts into needless cruelty. Yet, predictability, clear reasons, real control, and concrete compassion can preserve dignity and actually build trust even when decisions hurt.
The Commons
Authorship in the Age of AI
In an age when machines can mimic thought, the real question is who stands behind the words. A reflection on authorship, judgement, and the human presence that gives writing its authority.
The Commons
Which Humans? Whose Values? The Cultural Biases of AI
AI models mirror WEIRD cultural norms while claiming universality. Alignment methods reinforce this bias, projecting one community’s “common sense” as global truth. Recognising plurality through Wittgenstein’s language-games and Popper’s falsification reframes alignment as provisional and adaptive,
The Commons
Trust in the Age of the Machine
AI's fluency enchants, eroding the old signals of competence and authority. The danger is that trust becomes a machine illusion. Leaders must refuse the managerial shortcut and practise noble language—reasoned, responsible speech—to keep trust a human achievement.
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