Everybody Goes Home Safe

What the energy industry's safety culture taught me about judgment — especially when the briefing ends and real life begins.

Monte Fisher, CPA (Ret.), CFE

Independent analysis · Fisher Governance · 20+ years in governance, risk & controls

If you've traveled for work, you already know what Thursday means.

The meetings are finished. Your local team says let's get dinner. It runs longer than you planned, there are more rounds than you planned, and somewhere in the middle somebody senior reaches for the check.

Nothing about that moment feels like a business decision.

It is one.

I've been fortunate — good companies, and some outstanding mentors along the way.

If you spent time around the energy industry, you know the phrase in the title, and you'll recognize the routine that went with it. A safety moment before the meeting. Journey management before the drive. And if something didn't look right, you could stop the job.

I spent my career in finance, controls and governance — not operating a rig or running a refinery. That culture reached us anyway, and that was the point.

Everybody goes home safe to their families.

The way you made that happen was to think before something went wrong. Even the small habits: get to the hotel, find the emergency exit, count the doors between your room and the exit. If the hallway fills with smoke at two in the morning, that is not the moment to start working out which way to go. And the lesson went further than safety.

Don't wait for the incident to start thinking about the risk.

But no briefing covers Thursday night

A good company could brief you on the hotel, the transportation, the security situation, the emergency contacts and the local conditions. Mine did, and I was glad of it.

What it couldn't cover was everything else.

Back to Thursday. Do you fight for the check, or accept graciously? Does it matter who employs the person paying?

The trip ends Friday and you stay through the weekend. Does anything that applied on Tuesday still apply on Saturday?

A local manager you trust says a small administrative fee will release the cargo. He's been reliable for eleven years.

Everyone agrees in the meeting. Three weeks later you find out nobody actually said yes.

None of those arrive labeled safety, compliance or risk. They arrive as a dinner, a weekend, a logistics problem, a good meeting.

That's where judgment starts.

So I built The Unwritten Brief

It's free, and it takes about ten minutes.

Pick what you're walking into — including Thursday night itself. Pick the country or the environment. Set a few conditions. Then make the calls.

There are no trick answers — no option that's obviously a felony next to one that's obviously policy. Every choice is something a reasonable person might actually do, because that's how the real thing works.

Country notes are included, but they're questions to ask, not conclusions to carry. If one of them conflicts with what your local colleague tells you, believe your colleague. They're standing there. I'm not.

It doesn't replace anyone's safety, security, ethics, compliance or country briefing. It's practice for what happens when those end.

Mostly, it's meant to start a conversation. Run it before a trip, run it with your team, and argue about the answers — the disagreement is usually worth more than the score.

Why I built it

One of the best things the energy industry taught me was repetition. We practiced things everybody already knew, over and over, because knowing was never the objective. Recognizing the situation and acting on it was.

Most of my career has been finance, controls, risk and assurance, and the same thing holds there. A control environment was never the framework document. It's what somebody decides at 4:45 on a Friday, with a deadline in front of them, an approved process that's slow, an easier way sitting one click away, and nobody watching.

That's where the control actually gets tested.

That was as true of an expense approval twenty years ago as it is of someone pasting company data into an AI tool this afternoon. New surface area, same discipline — which is most of why I've spent recent years on AI governance. Not because the technology is unfamiliar, but because the control problem isn't.

Different risks. Same habit.

Notice it before it becomes an incident.

Help make it better

If you've worked or traveled internationally, you've almost certainly hit a situation I haven't included.

What caught you by surprise?

A dinner, a gift, a driver, a supplier, a negotiation, a misunderstanding you didn't spot until much later, a government interaction — or something I'd never think of.

Share it without names, confidential information or identifying details. The best additions become future scenarios, so the next person gets to think about it before they're standing in it.

Send it to monte@fishergovernance.ai, or add it wherever you found this.