“Yes.” She looks back at her notebook, though I suspect she does not need to. “You want structure, risk identified, exposure removed, and the legitimate businesses ready for scrutiny.”
“Correct.”
“What kind of scrutiny are you expecting?”
“The usual kind.”
“There is no usual kind.”
“There is always the usual kind. Competitors, reporters, consumers. Former and current employees.”
“And which of those are you most concerned about?”
“All of them.”
“That’s not prioritization.”
“It is honesty.”
She leans back slightly to study me.
“Do you always answer questions this way?”
“What way?”
“In a way that sounds complete until someone looks closer.”
I’m really starting to enjoy her. I shouldn’t be.
“Not always,” I say. “Sometimes.”
Her mouth twitches.
She looks down before it becomes a smile.
A small victory.
Foolish to think of it that way.
I do anyway.
“I’ll need access to senior leadership,” she says. “Not just prepared documents.”
“You’ll have it.”
“Will someone be standing over every conversation?”
“That depends on the conversation.”
Her pen stops again.
I can see the argument forming. The professional refusal to accept constraints that would make her work performative. The part of her that is ready to remind me what I hired her to do.
I let her reach it.
Then I say, “If you are interviewing employees who report to senior directors, no one will interfere. If you are interviewing family, someone will know.”
“That affects candor.”
