You are Claire Nesbitt, director of the Energy Transition Practice at Marlowe & Crest, a Manchester consultancy. At 16:40 on Tuesday 6 October 2026 a journalist gave you forty-eight hours to respond to an investigation into your flagship programme. Three hours later your own team began telling a version of its own. Tonight you have to tell your leadership group what kind of problem this is.
The situation
Marlowe & Crest has 600 people and bills £92 million a year at an 18% operating margin. It has grown almost entirely by word of mouth, so its reputation for rigour and integrity is close to its only asset. Your practice, 48 people, is the fastest-growing in the firm and runs three public-sector programmes worth £26 million a year together. You rebuilt it from 2020, after a burnout episode drove three senior consultants out in one quarter, around one idea: people who feel safe raising a problem catch it before a client does. Its engagement score is 78 out of 100. You report to the Managing Partner, who backed that rebuild in public.
The investigation alleges that the flagship programme, a multi-year contract worth £40 million, overstated its carbon-savings figures and that a junior analyst was pressured to "round up" the results; it quotes an anonymous employee. Part of it touches a genuine methodology dispute on one workstream; part is already travelling as rumour. At 19:40 an anonymous internal channel began saying that "leadership knew" and that "heads will roll". By then 30% of your team had read that version; the forecast is that it reaches 70% within a day and that engagement falls below 60 if nobody acts.
The analyst, identifiable to colleagues from the post, is considering resigning before the story even runs. Two senior consultants, who together bill £1.4 million a year, have signalled they will leave if the firm spins the story or pins the blame on the analyst. The practice's reputation index stands at 55 out of 100 and its wellbeing and trust reading at 50. As written, the story names the practice, not yet the firm.