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ARTICLE · 06 DECEMBER 2015

Integrity due diligence: the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns

KordaMentha
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You need to really understand who you are dealing with in order to protect your business from significant risk.

AustraliaCorporate/Commercial Law
KordaMentha Author
KordaMentha Author
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Why you should do homework on your business partners

1 Introduction

US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, once answered a question about a lack of evidence linking the Government of Iraq to selling weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, saying:

'Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things that we know that we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.'1

In a complex business world with its associated risks, it has become even more important to understand the known unknowns and where possible, the unknown unknowns when dealing with business partners.

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