Who We Work With Is Our Most Important Ethical Decision

B Corp Month rightly shines a spotlight on how businesses treat their people, communities and the planet. But there is a harder, less visible question agencies also need to ask: who are we willing to work with in the first place?

For agencies, that question is fundamental. We don’t make steel or sell consumer goods. Our product is influence. We shape narratives, enhance reputations and help ideas travel faster and further than they ever could on their own. That is a profound responsibility.

In recent years, our industry has raised its ambition on sustainability, inclusion and governance. Many firms have signed up to global commitments, invested in impact reporting and helped clients tell powerful stories of change. This progress is real and important. But alongside it sits an unavoidable tension: the gap between what we say we stand for and the mandates we accept.

Just because an organisation can pay our fees doesn’t mean it deserves our voice.

Our ethical client policy is, at its heart, a practical response to that tension. It formalises something every agency should be doing already: thinking critically and consistently about who we choose to amplify. It’s not about criticising others; it’s about being clear on our own line of sight between values and commercial decisions.

That clarity is most severely tested in the grey areas – where impact is mixed, trade‑offs are real and simple labels don’t apply. Some organisations are in genuine transition, others operate in challenging sectors that society still depends on, and many carry complex legacies that cannot be undone overnight. Business models, supply chains, governance and culture all evolve at different speeds, and the path from harm to positive impact is rarely linear.

If we were to demand perfection, we would quickly find there aren’t many we can work with. If we ignore material harms because a roadmap exists on paper, we become part of the problem. Navigating this is not simple. It requires us to ask:

• Is the core business model shifting, or just the messaging?
• Is there transparent measurement and accountability for progress?
• Are uncomfortable issues confronted openly, or carefully avoided?

And so, we don’t seek perfection but we do look for long‑term commitments, measurable progress and openness to scrutiny. An ethical client policy must both support the hard work of change and give us the courage to decline work when impact is clearly at odds with our principles.

This is not only about our external reputation, it goes to the heart of our culture. Our people choose to work here because we commit, publicly, to doing business differently. They notice who we work with. They ask questions about our client roster. They hold us to the standards we have set for ourselves. A clear ethical framework gives our teams confidence that when they bring their skills to a brief, they are contributing to work that aligns with their own values as well as the agency’s.

This responsibility is only intensifying as new technologies reshape how we work. Artificial intelligence is transforming every part of communication, from insight and strategy to creative and delivery. It’s already embedded in how agencies operate, including in the tools and products we build for ourselves and our clients. It offers extraordinary potential, but also raises serious questions about bias, privacy, intellectual property, labour, democratic integrity and environmental impact.

That makes it even more important that we work with our eyes open. We need to keep asking ourselves, and our clients, how AI is trained, whose data is involved, who benefits and who may be harmed, now and in the future. The fact that we use AI does not exempt us from these questions; it obliges us to be even more vigilant about ethics, transparency and accountability in our own business and in the organisations we choose to support. Holding that line is how we protect the trust that underpins every relationship we have, with clients, with our people and with the communities our work reaches.

This is not a cost-free stance. Saying “no” or “not yet” has real commercial consequences. But leadership is measured by the trade-offs you are willing to make when values and revenue collide. In a sector built on advising others how to build credibility, there is no integrity in preaching responsibility while quietly compromising on who we represent.

Ultimately, our legacy will not be the awards we win but the sum of the voices we chose to elevate, and the ones we chose, deliberately and transparently, to leave unheard.