Standards & responsible intelligence

Legitimate purpose and proportionate collection

A client mandate should explain the organisational decision and the justification for the information requested. Curiosity, personal hostility or a desire to suppress legitimate criticism is not a sufficient basis for an intelligence engagement. The research scope should connect each source category and enquiry to a relevant question, with unnecessary personal information excluded wherever possible.

Proportionality also affects how widely findings are circulated, how long material needs to be retained and whether a less intrusive source can answer the question. Applicable rules differ between jurisdictions; a website description cannot establish that a particular proposed interview, document request or use of personal information is permissible. Matters requiring local legal interpretation should be referred to qualified advisers before collection.

Human sources do not remove legal boundaries

An interview can explain experience and context, but it must not become a route to information that a person cannot lawfully disclose. Relevant obligations may arise from employment, confidentiality, privacy or a regulated professional role. A useful enquiry seeks voluntary, appropriately obtained knowledge and does not rely on coercion, bribery, unlawful impersonation or claims of official authority.

Confidentiality should not be confused with anonymity that guarantees safety or with a promise that evidence will never be disclosed. Source handling, attribution and circulation need realistic discussion. A contributor may be mistaken or have an interest in shaping the account. Human intelligence therefore requires the same analytical discipline as documentary research, including corroboration and clear statements of uncertainty.

Accuracy includes the evidence that complicates the story

A responsible report distinguishes verified records, observations, allegations and inference. It gives relevant contradictory material appropriate weight and does not convert a contested statement into an established fact through repetition. Date, jurisdiction and context matter: an old dispute, a similarly named company or a finding later overturned may be misleading if those details are omitted.

Clients should expect an assessment that can challenge their initial view. The purpose of intelligence is not to manufacture support for a preferred narrative. Where material cannot be substantiated, the limitation should be stated. Requests for legal conclusions, admissibility decisions, regulated advice or official investigative action must remain with the professionals or authorities responsible for them.

How constraints are applied in practice, not just stated

A stated ethics position is only meaningful if it changes what research actually happens. In practice, before accepting an instruction we ask what the client intends to do with the findings, since the same factual question can support a legitimate commercial decision or an improper one depending on its use — for example, background research on an individual can support a lawful appointment decision or an unlawful attempt to intimidate them, and we decline the latter regardless of how the request is phrased.

Source handling reflects the same discipline: where a human source could be identified from the content of a report, we consider whether that identification is necessary and proportionate to the client's decision, and we avoid recording more personal detail about third parties than the mandate requires. Where a jurisdiction's data-protection or privacy law restricts a category of enquiry, that restriction is treated as a hard limit on the research plan, not an obstacle to work around through a different jurisdiction's weaker rules.

When a finding sits close to a legal boundary — a document whose disclosure may require a court process, an allegation whose publication could carry defamation exposure, a request that edges toward surveillance of a private individual rather than research into a corporate counterparty — the engagement pauses for the client (and, where relevant, their own legal adviser) to confirm how to proceed, rather than defaulting to the broadest reading of the mandate. This applies even when a client is prepared to accept the risk themselves, since some constraints exist to protect third parties who are not party to the engagement.