In an interview on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” broadcast addressing Toyota’s PR woes, a crisis management executive dismissed the notion of a company quickly admitting when it has done something wrong.  Eric Dezenhall, CEO of Washington, D.C.-based Dezenhall Resources, responded to a question from host Rebecca Roberts:

Roberts: ...when a consumer base needs some compassion and needs some hand-holding, as you say, that conflicts with legal advice to admit no wrong. So how do you tread that line between admitting error but also apologizing to your consumers?

Dezenhall: You’re hitting what the great tension is. I mean, whether it’s Tiger Woods or anything, you’re always hearing these very silly PR people when a crisis hits dive in front of the camera and dish out this ridiculous cliche that if you just fessed up, the problem would go away.I see absolutely no evidence whatsoever that that’s true. Okay, it sounds wonderful in a high school PR class. I don’t see evidence that it’s true. If all of these people start confessing to things and apologizing to things, you’re vulnerable legally.

Well, I suppose if you shut your eyes really, really tight, you won’t see any evidence. My question to Mr. Dezenhall is simple: Have you ever looked for such evidence?

Here are a couple nuggets from a post I wrote last June:

In a study conducted 12 years ago, the year-end closing stock prices of companies that experienced crises were compared. Those that responded well saw their share value 4%, then rebound and remain 7% above their pre-crisis close, while those responded badly (that is, did what their lawyers told them to do) experienced initial declines of 10% with share prices remaining down, closing the year 15% below pre-crisis levels. That???s a 22% difference in year-end share value between companies that responded honestly and candidly versus those lawyered up over the possibility of lawsuits.

(The Oxford Executive Research Briefing that reported these findings is detailed in this Wharton Leadership Digest, a PDF file.)

Another study, this one from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, found that companies taking responsibility in a crisis outperformed those that blamed someone else by 14-19%.

(Note to Mr. Dezenhall: The “American Heritage Dictionary” defines “evidence” as “a thing or things helpful in forming a conclusion or judgment.”)

In the same blog post, I referenced Jim Golden, a negotiation counsel for a Tennessee law firm, who said that doing the right thing and telling the truth results in fewer cases going to trial and smaller judgments from those cases that do make it to the inside of a courtroom. Why? Because the truth that was hidden and denied on advice of counsel is revealed in court to a judge and jury who then perceive the organization as the bad guy. As I wrote in June, when companies “fess up” (as Dezenhall puts it) “there???s nothing left to be proven in court. Golden???s clients that have taken this approach have had their insurance premiums reduced by up to 30%.”

See? If you look for evidence, you’ll have a much better shot at finding it.

There’s even more evidence in FIR Live featuring Golden and New York-based crisis expert Fred Garcia.

To be clear, neither Golden nor Garcia recommend an organization take responsibility for something it didn’t do. But if they know they screwed up, they’re able to get it behind them faster by just admitting it, rather than allow information to continue to dribble out over weeks or months.