We need to champion truth and demand CEO transparency, says Gerard Corbett, chair and CEO of (PRSA)

The Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street movement, global financial meltdown and other recent international crises are canaries in the mine. Taken separately, there is little that connects them together other than a few still-forming notions around equality and freedom. But when strung together, they represent a microcosm of the larger challenges awaiting both the global business community and public relations professionals.

On the horizon is an age of PR in which we either lead the charge toward genuine transparency that benefits business and society or continue to dither on our principles and settle for the status quo. It is high time that PR professionals rethink the wisdom of transparency and its role in today’s society, which demands truth and accountability.

We must consider the proper role of public relations professionals. We must ask ourselves, how can we not advocate for complete transparency in the face of the public’s more strident and vociferous demand for honesty? The era of obfuscation is over. It has been replaced by a far more complex and fluid age. Cynicism is high, trust in government and business is disastrously low and people are crying out for someone, anyone, to just tell them the truth.

How have we gotten to the point in which the truth is something that seems almost foreign to many leaders? It’s as though what they were told as children – that truth and honesty will always prevail no matter what the situation – is somehow forgotten by the time they turn 40.

What role do we as public relations professionals, the very people who are supposed to serve the public interest by protecting and advancing the free flow of accurate and truthful information, play in this growing chasm between corporate messaging and the public’s expectation for transparency and honesty? Are we helping or hurting the matter? Are we truly advising our clients to do what is best for their business and society, or merely what is best for the former while sacrificing the latter?

There are no easy answers to these questions. These issues have been debated for years. And yet we are still faced with scathing commentary against our profession, including this from New York Times media columnist David Carr:

“As American business has become more and more media savvy, its leaders have appeared in media less and less. Business reporters have to work their way past background conversations with underlings, written statements that state nothing, and that increasingly hardy perennial: the ‘no comment.’ The modern chief executive lives behind a wall of communications operatives, many of whom ladle out slop meant to obscure rather than reveal.”

In case you missed the gist of Carr’s comments, PR professionals are, in short, “communications operatives” who are nothing more than obfuscators for our bosses. Not exactly high praise.

With that in mind, it’s worth examining just what is public relations’ role in the modern world of business and politics. Is it to push and prod businesses and politicians to get in line with reality and commence regimes of legitimate transparency? Is it to serve as the conscience for a business when no one else can or is willing to see the writing on the wall: that the world is changing rapidly, and new ways of communicating, even via social media, are no longer enough?

If you ask me, it is both.

What is needed now, more than ever, is a commitment by PR professionals to hold their clients’ or employers’ proverbial feet to the fire and demand what society is already so clearly demanding of us: truth and accountability.

The time is rapidly approaching for a put-up or shut-up moment for the profession. Are we going to lead the business community into an era of genuine CEO transparency or continue to muddle along with lofty platitudes but little to show for it?

Let’s hope it is the former...and soon.