Six in 10 senior communications leaders would rather stay silent than speak up on divisive issues, even when their organisation could legitimately comment. That is the headline finding of this year's Ipsos Reputation Council report, based on conversations with 200 in-house communications and corporate affairs leaders from around the world.

The numbers point to a practice, not a tactic. More than a third of council members said their organisation had stayed quiet on issues it would previously have commented on. Almost a quarter admitted they had consciously under-communicated credible ESG progress — burying real work rather than inviting scrutiny of it.

Ipsos calls this entrenchment "Strategic Silence", and frames it as the clearest sign of a decision-making environment that has soured. The report, titled Life After Predictability, argues that stakeholder expectations have fragmented, political risks have become harder to anticipate, and the consequences of misjudgement can be severe.

What does this change for practitioners?

The report's structural claim deserves attention. Ipsos, which has tracked the forces shaping the function through the Reputation Council since 2009, says communications is shifting from a messaging function to a decision-support function.

For in-house teams, that reframing has practical consequences. If the job is no longer primarily to craft and distribute statements, then the question of whether to speak at all becomes a judgment call that comms leaders are expected to inform — and to own.

The silence figures suggest many leaders have already made that call. Choosing not to comment on issues the organisation once addressed is a deliberate posture. Under-communicating verified ESG progress is a risk trade-off: the reputational cost of silence against the political cost of visibility.

Silence is not inaction

Ipsos is careful to distinguish silence from passivity. The report's positioning — "Silence ≠ inaction" — implies that staying quiet should be a considered strategic choice, with the organisation prepared to explain it internally and externally if challenged.

Practitioners reading the findings will recognise the bind. Speaking on a divisive issue invites attack from one constituency or another; staying silent can be read as indifference. The council members' preference for quiet suggests that, at senior level, the balance of risk now tilts toward saying less.

Whether that posture holds depends on pressures the report only gestures at: fragmented audiences, harder-to-read political weather, and the severity of getting it wrong. What is clear from the data is that the default has shifted. Six in 10 leaders preferring silence is not caution at the margins. It is the new centre of gravity for the function.