The price of saying no

There is an old corporate truth in Bangladesh: everyone admires integrity until it begins to disturb someone important. As long as an honest chief executive is improving numbers, tightening discipline, and speaking politely in board meetings, he is praised. The moment he blocks a favoured appointment or refuses to bend rules for a powerful recommendation, he suddenly becomes immature, inflexible, and poor at “stakeholder management”. In our banking sector, character is often celebrated in speeches and punished in practice.

Recently, I met a young acting chief executive of a financial institution. He was bright, humble, energetic and full of ideas. He wanted to transform the institution with new rigour. Yet I sensed tension in his body language. Later, I understood why. Pressure was mounting on him to accommodate an appointment he did not believe was right. He resisted. In doing so, he stood up for principle. In Bangladesh’s financial sector, that is sometimes a touching but costly habit.

He probably believed his board, satisfied with his performance, would support him. That was his first lesson. In difficult moments, the first institution to discover flexibility is often the board itself. Directors who praise professionalism in the afternoon can become admirers of compromise by evening. A chief executive may think performance is his shield. In reality, that shield often melts under the first serious phone call from the right quarter.

I have written before about why chief executives do not stand together when one of them comes under pressure from a board or powerful owners. The answer is painfully simple. They are too busy surviving. There are nearly a hundred chief executives across banks and non-bank financial institutions, yet if one is cornered for doing the right thing, nobody truly stands beside him. Some offer private sympathy. Some gently mock him for being foolish. Others suggest he should have been more practical, which in our corporate language often means less honest. The lesson lands only when the pressure shifts to their own door.

I do not recall bankers’ associations becoming a memorable defender of such professionals either. They are visible at seminars, policy dialogues, gala dinners and group photographs. But when a professional banker is squeezed for resisting interference, the hall suddenly falls silent. Silence remains one of the safest leadership strategies in the country.

This is not merely a sad story about one executive. It is a warning about the sector’s health. It tells every chief executive that the real job is not banking but balancing integrity against pressure. It tells internal auditors, compliance officers and risk managers that their reports matter less than influence. It tells depositors that governance is often decorative in annual reports, while decisions are made elsewhere. Most dangerously, it signals to corrupt owners and enablers that the machinery protecting them is still intact.

The damage goes beyond a single appointment or resignation. It weakens institutional confidence. Honest professionals learn that courage can end careers. Boards learn that convenience is easier than principle. Young bankers learn that silence is safer than judgment. The result is predictable: weak governance, timid management, compromised oversight, and ultimately public loss.

The central bank must act more firmly. Fit and proper tests for directors should be real, not ceremonial. Businesspeople with material conflicts must be kept off boards. Independent directors must be genuinely independent, not familiar names in new roles. Internal audit, compliance and whistleblowing systems must be protected from board capture. Most importantly, accountability must extend not only to owners and directors but also to executives who enable abuse through silence or cooperation.

Until then, the banking sector will continue this tragic comedy. Integrity will be praised at conferences, punished in practice, and quietly pushed to the margins. Good people will resign, or learn quickly how not to be good.

The writer is the founder of BuildCon Consultancies Ltd and BuildNation Ltd