Years ago, a leader I respected enormously used a simple test, and I have carried it with me ever since. Before any decision, picture it on the back page of the Financial Review. If the idea of seeing it there made you uneasy, that was your signal to stop, think harder, and work out the right way forward.
I taught that test to every team I led. Not as a rule about getting caught, but as a habit of conscience. His deeper point was one I have come to believe completely: as a leader, your behaviour and your decisions, the good ones and the bad ones, are seen by others, and they shape others. Leaders cast long shadows. You do not always get to choose the shape of them. You do get to choose their direction.
Leaders cast long shadows. You do not always get to choose the shape of them. You do get to choose their direction.
I will not pretend the last few years have been anything other than hard. When APRA made its findings about my time at Xinja, I found them very difficult to reconcile with how I had tried to operate across a long career. But they were the findings. And I have never been a man for looking backwards, sitting in regret, or rehearsing grievances. I would rather look forward, and look inward.
So that is what I have done. I am not a perfect man. I have always tried to do good and to act with integrity, and I have built my career on those values. But trying is not the same as never falling short. I do not agree with the findings, and I have said so plainly. But an outcome like that demands reflection regardless of whether you accept it, and the only question worth asking is what I can learn and how I lead better from here.
I have chosen to turn a genuinely painful chapter into something useful.
I have completed the training to become qualified to teach ethics in schools. I did it partly to give back and partly, honestly, to keep learning myself. Sitting with young people and working through what it means to do the right thing, especially when it is not the easy thing, has sharpened my own thinking more than I expected. Governance and transparency have always mattered to me. Now I think about them more deeply than ever, because the world has become more complex, not less. In an age of rapid change and artificial intelligence, the gap between moving fast and getting it right has never carried higher stakes.
The gap between moving fast and getting it right has never carried higher stakes.
That is where I am putting my experience to work. I spend much of my time now with new fund managers navigating cross-jurisdictional complexity, the kind of terrain where a well-intentioned decision in one market can have serious consequences in another, and where good people can get it badly wrong simply because the ground is unforgiving. I bring three things to that work: the expertise of a long career, the experience of having built and governed across many countries, and a personal understanding, earned the hard way, of what it costs when something goes wrong.
None of this is about defending the past. You cannot change what has happened, and you cannot control what others decide. You can only control how you respond, and what you build next. My response is to help others hold two things at once that too often pull apart: the courage to do things differently and better, and the discipline to do them inside strong, well-run frameworks. That balance of innovation with integrity is the work I care most about now.
