How to avoid being "hodged", develop your own hodges.

Margaret Hodge chairs the Public Accounts Select Committee and she does a pretty fine job in holding leaders to account.

Apparently the leaders who have to face the Select Committee are now employing expensive media training consultants to help them to prepare answers to the searching questions members of the PAC may ask them. It looks like it is becoming a burgeoning industry.

When Margaret Hodge was asked about this in a BBC Radio 4 interview she simply stated that all that was required was "honesty, openness and directness" in the answers provided to the questions. The going only got tough when there was "obfuscation, waffling and dishonesty" i.e. evading being accountability.

The key to avoiding this kind of grilling or of being "hodged" is to promote transparency, honesty and integrity in both personal and organisational behaviours. Organisations could start to engender and encourage a challenging internal culture, developing their own "hodge" skills where asking and answering difficult questions and airing differences of opinion are encouraged before the impact of key decisions hit the market place. Margaret Hodge might then eventually be out of a job, saving even more public money, and we might have a band more confident business sector.