We live in the age of the risk management of everything. Paradoxically this still leaves organisations that diligently engage in risk management exposed to what Donald Rumsfeld called ‘unknown unknowns’ which, by definition, are out of reach of risk management.

This warning about the escalation of the risk management of everything should be taken seriously. In his first Demos book, The Audit Explosion, Michael Power warned against that companies and governments preoccupation with measuring what is measurable – the   now discredited ‘targets culture’.

Power traces the start of the risk management of everything back to 1995 – the year of the collapse Barings bank Shell’s Brent Spar PR disaster. Those events illustrated the two key aspects of the new obsession with risk management: internal control and reputation.

The ability of a rogue trader to bring down a bank has prompted organisations to redouble their efforts to use internal control systems to manage risk. But the danger is that the focus on internal controls to manage risks of ‘known unknowns’ leaves organisations vulnerable to ‘unknown unknowns’.

“Reputation has become a new source of anxiety where organisational identity and economic survival are at stake And if everything may impact on organisational reputation, then reputational risk management demands the risk management of everything.”

The anxiety about reputation means that experts and professional bodies are increasingly taking defensive steps to protect their own name, rather than managing risks on behalf of the public. One example of this the proliferation of ‘small print’ as professionals ranging from doctors to accountants attempt to hand risk back to customers, clients or society as a whole.

Michael Power is P.D. Leake Professor of Accounting and Co-Director ESRC Centre for Analysis if Risk and Regulation at the London School of Economics and Political Science. The Audit Explosion was published by Demos in 1994.