By Ana Adi and Thomas Stoeckle
Contributors to AMEC’s Barcelona Principles 4.0 and the “What If” framework published in Public Relations Review

In our contribution to 2023’s Ethics Month, we argued that public relations must break free from its legacy as a mouthpiece. Instead, we proposed a new role: PR as facilitator, ethically grounded, stakeholder-oriented, and capable of navigating the super wicked challenges of a polarized, datafied world.

We called for reflective practice, professional accountability, and systemic change.

And we did not stop there.

From Provocation to Practice: The “What If” Framework

This year, we return with a practical framework for responsible communication, one built precisely for the messy, pluralist, contradictory spaces where ethics help navigate but where rules often fail.

The “What If” framework is not another ethics code.
It is a mindset and a method.
It embraces the theory of change and reflection. In doing so, it builds ethics – the understanding of right and wrong, and the guidance to making good (i.e. honest and fair) decisions – into the architecture of communication practice.

It does this by embedding strategic doubt, dialogic loops, and AI-supported reflexivity into the entire communication cycle, from planning and design to execution and evaluation.

It’s grounded in metamodern thinking, a stance that holds both hope and humility, pluralism and responsibility, complexity and coherence. It recognizes that impact and value are not the same, that outcomes vary across stakeholder publics, and that the role of the communicator is not just to persuade, but to interrogate persuasion itself.

Why This Matters Now

Consider the ethical frontlines communicators face today:

• AI tools scale content but also bias (the inequalities.ai study shows just that).
• Audiences demand transparency yet define it differently (selective transparency or data dump?).
• Social and environmental claims draw scrutiny, raising the stakes for greenwashing (and every other sort of -washing) and performative ethics.
• Political communication is increasingly just self-interested partisan theatre, leaving large parts of the electorate (and thus society) feeling unrepresented.

These aren’t just challenges of execution. They are dilemmas of interpretation, perspective, and power. They require more than “best practices.” They need frameworks that allow uncertainty and support questions, not just answers.

That’s what the “What If” framework enables.

What the “What If” Model Offers

At its core, the framework asks:

• What if we’re wrong?
• What if stakeholders see this differently?
• What if unintended consequences are already happening, but not yet visible on our dashboards?

To address those, the model recommends:

1. Starting with strategic doubt – Explore counterfactuals and assumptions before launch, not only in retrospect.
2. Embedding dialogic loops – Create space for stakeholder feedback and challenge throughout, not just in final reports.
3. Using AI (self)critically – Deploy generative AI not to accelerate production, but to surface blind spots, plural interpretations, and bias in framing, thinking and interpretation.

Four Ways to Join the Experiment

In the spirit of Ethics First, we’re inviting practitioners to test and shape the framework. You can participate in any of these ways—adapted to your context, capacity, or curiosity:

• Dialogue Labs – Facilitate a 60–90 min “What if” session with your team or client using our prompt kit to identify risks, assumptions, and alternative views.
• Reflexive Diaries – Log short reflections during a campaign: surprises, tensions, unintended impacts. Use our templates to guide and structure this thinking.
• Strategic “What If” Reviews – Join a facilitated debrief post-campaign to explore lessons, contradictions, and strategic inflection points.
• Ethical Compass Feedback – Help co-develop pluralistic indicators for responsible practice by reviewing our prototypes and suggesting use cases.

No fees, no certificates. Just real-world insights, shared learning, and acknowledgement in our 2026 open-access insights report.

Connecting Back: From Ethics to Experimentation

In 2023’s Ethics Month post, we wrote: “PR will become a stakeholder-oriented facilitator. Listening, not just speaking. Learning, not just delivering.”

This year, we are operationalizing that vision. The “What If” framework offers a practical bridge between values and strategy, between responsibility and action. It’s a chance to model and practice ethical deliberation, not just declare it.

By participating, you are likely to be more likely to:

• Future-proof your strategies: testing before failing.
• Build credibility with clients and communities: by embracing plurality, not smoothing it over.
• Contribute to redefining what ethical communication can mean across geographies, sectors, and dilemmas.

Let’s Co-create Living Ethics

Codes guide, but frameworks enable.

This Ethics First Month, let’s challenge ourselves to reflect more deeply, act more responsibly, and learn more courageously.

If you’re curious—or even skeptical—we’d love to hear from you.

📩 Find us on LinkedIn: Ana & Thomas
✉️ Subject: What If – Global Alliance

Let’s not just talk ethics. Let’s test it. Together.

What if we could?

Prof. Dr. Ana Adi (www.anaadi.net) is Professor of Public Relations and Corporate

Communication at Quadriga University of Applied Sciences, Berlin. Her research and

practice focus on strategic communication, sustainability, activism, AI, and the future of

the profession. She is the editor of previous open-access readers on Corporate Activism,

Women in PR, and Artificial Intelligence in PR.

Thomas Stoeckle is a recovering business executive in the communication intelligence

and consultancy space. Forever curious, critical and skeptical, late-blooming academic.

Deep interest in the history, present and future of public communication.

Any thoughts or opinions expressed are that of the authors and not of Global Alliance.