Why the most sensitive workplace concerns rarely resolve inside traditional HR or outside counsel — and what a consulting-led third path looks like in practice.
Most organizations discover, sometimes late, that the hardest people questions live in the terrain between traditional HR and outside counsel. HR is optimized for policy, process, and compliance. Counsel is optimized for legal exposure. Neither is shaped for the moment where trust has quietly drained, conduct has been worked around, and leadership needs a clear read on what is actually happening.
The third path is a contained, senior, consulting-led response. It borrows discipline from investigation practice and judgment from senior HR, but the frame is neither adversarial nor procedural. It is diagnostic. It is directed. And it is held in confidence.
This piece describes what the third path looks like in practice, when it earns its keep, and the conditions under which boards, executive teams, and senior People leaders should reach for it.
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