By the time we get to season seven of The West Wing episode “Here Today”, Toby Ziegler has spent six seasons scolding everyone about ethics. He’s been a steadfast, if annoyingly so, moral compass. He’s the extremely righteous guy with the sigh and the eyeroll when others screw up.
Then Toby goes under federal investigation for leaking classified information and suddenly the watchdog becomes the watched. Sound familiar?
Because that’s exactly the shape of the principal Peggy Burrows and the Haeata Community Campus story. The principal that called out other people’s mistakes over the mouldy lunch fiasco (and an ERA case) is now dealing with her own (alleged) process failures.
The point is, before the fungusy dust even settled, Haeata gets flagged by the Auditor-General for an $18,500 Queenstown trip for six staff, tied to “professional development.” The school insists everything was appropriate, cheap flights, board approval, and the guidelines followed. This is Toby trying to explain the unexplainable while the investigations close in.
When you position yourself as the sensible one, and purposefully stick your head above the parapet to preach, people expect your house to be spotless. Not “mostly clean.” Not “looks pretty nice.” Squeaky f***ing clean, as in eat off the toilet seat clean.
When you’ve pushed for accountability in someone else’s house, you don’t get the luxury of a messy kitchen in your own. And when two issues land at once (food safety and sensitive spending), you’ve already given away your right to complain about the spotlight. Behaviourally speaking, this is just the golden rule. Do onto others… right?
So the West Wing lesson stands. If you want to launch salvos from the moral high ground, you’d better know every detail of your own operation. Officials and agencies will check, the politicians you’ve been attacking will certainly check, even some empowered internet warrior will check, (probably twice). And when someone finds even the smallest speck of dirt, they’ll swing the brightest light they’ve got back your way. When this happens, you don’t get grace periods or the privilege of context; you just get judged against the standard THAT YOU SET.
PR ProTip:
We advise clients to hold the moral high ground, not weaponise it. The moment you start using it to take shots at others, you invite everyone to inspect how solid your own footing is. If you’re going to talk publicly about accountability, assume your accounting, processes, and decisions will be inspected line by line. Keep your house clean and comms team ready.
All this reminds me that I’ve got some house cleaning to do of my own!
