A free public diagnostic · Updated weekly

An apology is not an account.

A diagnostic of the corporate statement. Paste the text, or pick a recent public apology from the worked examples below. We do not score shame. We surface what the statement leaves out: the active voice that became passive, the actor that diffused into a process, the affected party that fell out of the record, the warning that didn't survive into the current version.

Worked example — WH Smith PLC, Chair's statement on the Deloitte Review findings (19 November 2025)

Source: WH Smith PLC, RNS announcement "Findings following the independent Deloitte Review", 19 November 2025 — the Chair's statement below is quoted verbatim and attributed to Annette Court, Chair. The surrounding facts (the CEO change and the FCA investigation) are drawn from WH Smith's companion "Board Changes" RNS of the same date. We have highlighted the patterns the methodology identifies. This is a map of absence, not a verdict.

Active decision-maker removed; passive construction substituted Action converted to a noun ("shortcomings", "issues", "decisions") Remedial promise with no owner, no date, no mechanism

IssuerWH Smith PLC SpeakerAnnette Court, Chair Date19 November 2025 TriggerDeloitte review findings; CEO resignation; FCA investigation

This is an extremely serious matter that has had the Board's full attention, and we sincerely apologise for the shortcomings identified. While the issues identified arose in our North America division, we recognise the importance of strengthening controls, governance and reporting procedures across the Group. We have acted swiftly to build a comprehensive remediation plan and will reinforce the financial discipline and integrity that underpin our business moving forward.

Inference

Harm appears without an actor

The apology is for "the shortcomings identified" and "the issues identified [that] arose" — identified by whom, and arisen how? The construction lets the harm exist without anyone having caused it. The statement apologises for the shortcomings without naming who was accountable for them.

Question the board may reasonably need answered: Who is the single named individual accountable, in role on the balance sheet date, for the design, operation and effectiveness of the North American finance function's supplier revenue controls?

Inference

The decision-makers are not named

WH Smith's companion announcement of the same date names the departing Group CEO (Carl Cowling) and the incoming Interim Group CEO (Andrew Harrison). The individuals who made the North American supplier-revenue decisions the Deloitte Review examined are not named in this statement. The audience cannot tell whether those individuals remain in role, have been moved, or have left.

Question the board may reasonably need answered: Which named individuals made the supplier revenue recognition decisions now identified as inadequate, and what is the current status of each of those individuals in the company's employment?

Observed

Commitments without owners

"Strengthening controls, governance and reporting procedures across the Group", building "a comprehensive remediation plan", and the pledge to "reinforce the financial discipline and integrity that underpin our business" are commitments that carry no named owner, no deadline, no mechanism, and no defined output within the statement itself.

Question the board may reasonably need answered: For each commitment, who is the named owner, what is the deadline, and what is the evidence by which progress will be measured and reported?

Evidence unavailable publicly

The affected parties are not in the room

The statement names the Board and the North America division. It does not name the shareholders who received the prior trading guidance later revised downward, the suppliers whose revenue treatment is in question, or the finance team members whose work is described as "shortcomings". The audiences materially affected by the chain are not represented in the account of the chain.

Question the board may reasonably need answered: Which specific groups are materially affected by the decision chain now under review, and what is the documented basis for their inclusion in the design of the new control framework?

Boundary statement. This is an omission map, not a verdict. The statement may be substantively accurate. The organisation and the affected people may hold evidence the statement does not contain. The diagnostic identifies questions the public record, on its own, cannot answer. The decision to commission a fuller review is the reader's.

Run it on your own statement

Paste any corporate apology, incident statement, ministerial response, product recall, or crisis communication below. The audit identifies the same patterns: passive voice without a responsible actor, action converted to noun, missing harmed groups, collapsed chronology, inflated certainty, remedial promises without owner or date.

Corporate statement (paste here)

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Organisation

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See what we look for

The Apology Autopsy is delivered by named human review, not an automated score. Paste a statement above and press the button; the text goes directly to our review desk, and we reply by email from reports@cogniosynthesisportal.uk. Your text is not used to train any model, is not published, and is retained only as long as needed to deliver the result, then deleted. The firm's public crisis protocol governs any escalation the autopsy may surface.

What we look for

The Apology Autopsy applies eight checks. Each is a separate line in the output.

Active → passive

Named decision-makers removed; passive construction substituted ("mistakes were made", "the process identified", "it was determined").

Action → noun

Verbs of doing converted to nominalised abstractions ("shortcomings", "decisions", "issues", "the situation") that obscure who did what.

Missing harmed groups

Affected parties named in third-party sources but absent from the statement that governs the response.

Collapsed chronology

First known warning, last acknowledged, next incident — replaced by a single present-tense position.

Inflated certainty

Claims of completeness, of root cause, of resolution — where the underlying chain of evidence has not been published.

Promises without owners

Remedial commitments with no named individual, no deadline, no mechanism, no defined output.

Provenance exceptions

Claims whose source chain cannot be followed within the statement itself.

Language drift from prior incidents

Identical patterns to the organisation's earlier unresolved statements — the institutional euphemism, the recurring apology architecture.

If the autopsy finds something, the next step is Ghost Ledger

The Apology Autopsy is the public front door. The three paid products behind it are the work the firm does for a board, an audit committee, or a chief risk officer. Each is a fixed-scope engagement on the institutional memory review methodology. The firm's public crisis protocol governs every engagement — including the engagements the Apology Autopsy surfaces.

Pre-publication language review

Have a statement you intend to publish? Run it through the auditor before publication. The output is a flagged draft and a remediation register. A 1–2 day turnaround.

From £2,500

Longitudinal statement monitoring

An ongoing review of every public statement, incident response, apology, and regulatory disclosure. A monthly audit log of patterns. The route to a board-defensible public-record register.

From £2,500 / month

Ghost Ledger — Institutional Memory Audit

The full board-defence-grade review. One decision chain, one named sponsor, one evidence room. The Material Narrative Controls Report (the Ghost Ledger) is the principal deliverable. A 6-week cycle.

From £60,000

The Apology Autopsy is a free public diagnostic. It is the cheapest way to see what the institutional memory review methodology actually does. If the output is interesting, the next step is a Ghost Ledger. If the output is not interesting, we have learned something about the statement.