Disclosure

So what is disclosure? Well, it is complicated.

Although the PRSA BEPS is still working to refine its guidelines and definition for the term, the board does use the following working definition for disclosure: “the intentional release of information to facilitate transparency, openness, access and accountability."

In other words, disclosure is about frankness. However, what often makes disclosure tricky is that sometimes practitioners cannot release information. Sometimes the information belongs to someone else. Sometimes the legal department says that information must be withheld. Sometimes information is confidential or proprietary and cannot be released. However, if practitioners withhold information or do not disclose information for no credible reason, they often help to create the scandals, ethical failures and other disgraces we read and hear about in the news.