False certainty: The most dangerous sustainability risk of all
What happens when two of Europe’s most powerful economies decide corporate risk transparency doesn’t matter?
There’s a quiet fiction that sits at the heart of many boardrooms.
It sounds like this: “We haven’t heard anything, so there’s nothing to worry about.” Or: “We’ve got controls in place, so we’re covered.” Or even: “Let’s not overcomplicate things - we just need the basics for compliance.”
It’s comforting. Reassuring. Familiar.
It’s also wrong.
Because in most businesses, the greatest sustainability risk isn’t the one you’ve mapped. It’s the one you’ve assumed doesn’t exist - because the data didn’t show it, or the process didn’t catch it, or the supplier didn’t mention it.
And this week, that mindset wasn’t just on display in corporate boardrooms. It was on full political display in Brussels.
The quiet collapse of corporate responsibility
On Tuesday this week, the French president and German chancellor jointly called for the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD or CS3D) to be killed off. No formal vote was needed. Their opposition alone is enough to stall one of the EU’s most ambitious attempts to embed risk accountability in law.
The directive was far from perfect. But it aimed to do something long overdue: place legal responsibility on companies to identify, prevent and mitigate adverse human rights and environmental impacts across their value chains.
Instead, what we got was a powerful signal: that when risk transparency threatens economic or political discomfort, it’s dispensable.
This isn’t just about EU legislation. It’s about the kind of future we’re choosing to build - or ignore.
And the timing is revealing. Just one day earlier, the UK and EU agreed to reset diplomatic ties and open a new chapter of strategic cooperation. Yet barely 24 hours later, two of Europe’s biggest economies signalled that corporate due diligence - the bare minimum of responsible capitalism - was now optional.
When denial looks like discipline
In a recent article for the New York Times, David Gelles captured a US government that didn’t just underplay climate risk - it actively dismantled the systems that could have helped it prepare.
Scientists dismissed. Resilience funding withdrawn. Monitoring systems shuttered. All in the name of efficiency, sovereignty, or ideological purity.
France and Germany didn’t need to be quite so dramatic. A joint statement did the job.
But the parallels are striking. Once again, the illusion of control won out over meaningful governance. Once again, the burden of proof was placed on the invisible, outsourced and unheard.
The myth of the mature control environment
One of the most damaging ideas in sustainability governance is that maturity equals safety.
That just because the controls have been in place for years, they still work. That because there’s a policy on the intranet, the behaviour exists on the ground. That because the dashboard shows green, the process is sound.
The reality? Most businesses overestimate their visibility and underestimate their exposure.
In our ESG Controls Toolkit, we outline why many sustainability controls are no longer fit for purpose - and how they must evolve to match the legal, ethical, and operational demands of today’s economy. In the CS3D Readiness Blueprint (which, admittedly, is no longer about readiness for a legislative requirement, but about embedding strong governance and due diligence processes) we talk through practical steps to implement better risk management to foresee and mitigate sustainability risks in the supply chain.
But more importantly, our Profit by Design framework connects those improvements to outcomes:
Reduced cost of disruption
Faster recovery from shocks
Enhanced investor confidence
And yes - measurable, resilient profitability
Because better controls don’t just help you sleep at night. They protect your ability to perform.
False certainty is no longer tenable
The age of “we didn’t know” is over. If your controls don’t surface problems until the public does, they’re not controls - they’re blindfolds.
And in a world of escalating scrutiny, supply chain fragility, and climate instability, blindfolds break businesses.
That’s why Profit by Design doesn’t just challenge the myths of sustainability. It offers a practical blueprint to lead through them.
Coming Saturday: Profit by Design - How sustainability drives resilience and profitability Get the full framework, including six detailed case studies, strategic levers, and governance tools that go beyond compliance to create competitive advantage. Subscribe here to get it first.