Ethical leadership in intelligence collection rarely fails in a single moment. It erodes gradually through stretched mandates, unclear consent, subtle political pressure, and records that cannot show what was known, believed, and intended at the time. In that environment, leaders are not just setting targets. They are shaping how far their people will go for the mission, what they will accept, and what they choose not to record or report.
The E.L.I.T.I.E Pillars are a practical way to keep that pressure under control. Developed from experience across law enforcement, corrections, and national security, they turn ethical leadership into six operational disciplines that can be applied in tasking meetings, targeting boards, and collection plans:
As with early warning signs of politicisation, the objective is not to add more doctrine. It is to provide small repeatable practices that help keep purpose, power, and data aligned under pressure.
In intelligence, leadership is often described in terms of speed, secrecy, and coordination. Ethical leadership introduces an additional requirement: the use of exceptional powers must remain lawful, proportionate, and explainable to people who were not present when the decisions were made. It is not only about personal character. It is about how leaders design boundaries, shape incentives, and create a record that a reasonable external reviewer could follow.
Legal compliance is necessary but not sufficient. Past operations and historical failures show that activities can fall within formal legal authorities yet still generate public concern, harm vulnerable people, or damage the agency's long-term legitimacy. The gap between what is ‘legal’ and what is perceived as ‘legitimate’ must be managed deliberately, not assumed away.
The E.L.I.T.I.E pillars treat ethics as part of operational design, not as a retrospective check. Each pillar links a leadership responsibility to practical tools, such as structured notes, overlays, recorded dissent, and forward-looking exercises, which can be integrated into existing processes with minimal disruption.
Without clear and visible boundaries, collection powers tend to expand to fill the available space. New technologies, new data flows, and joint operations create areas where acceptable practice is uncertain. In these conditions, existing habits can become the default, even when the environment and risks have changed.
The leadership responsibility is to translate ethical rules into operational structures. This includes:
Every significant operation is accompanied by a brief ‘ethical overlay’ alongside legal advice. It records:
If a proposal conflicts with a recorded prohibition, the plan is either redesigned or not approved. The overlay is formally authorised and dated like any other operational document.
Ethics advisers or trained ‘ethics leads’ are involved from the start of planning, not only at the end. Their role is to identify pressure points, ask what will happen if a practice expands or is repeated, and set triggers for renewed approval when the scope changes. During executive, they are re-engaged when thresholds are approached or exceeded, rather than only after a complaint or incident.
A simple test is whether an external review could, from documentation alone, determine the operation's ethical boundaries and who approved them. If not, the boundary work is incomplete.
In covert work, staff often learn more from observed behaviour than from written policy. If leaders ignore procedures "just this once," avoid scrutiny, or reward outcomes regardless of methods, those signals become the practical standard.
The responsibility of the leadership is therefore to demonstrate ethical judgement in how decisions are made, explained, and reviewed. This includes:
Significant operations conclude with a short, structured debrief that asks:
The senior leader attends, listens before speaking, and ensures that improvements are identified, documented and assigned.
Performance reviews for senior staff include feedback on how they respond to ethical questions, considering:
This approach treats ethical conduct as a core part of leadership performance, rather than a separate or optional quality.
Much intelligence does not allow for fully informed, freely given consent. Surveillance is covert. Human sources may act under constraint, obligation, or incomplete information. People in prisons, immigration detention, or high-risk communities often have limited capacity to refuse engagement.
This reality does not remove ethical responsibilities; it increases them. Where genuine consent is restricted or impossible, leaders must actively guard against treating people purely as instruments.
The leadership responsibility is to ensure that considerations of autonomy remain visible in decisions, even when full consent cannot be achieved.
For operations involving constrained or vulnerable people, leaders approve a brief assessment that records:
This assessment is attached to the operational plan and updated if the profile of affected people changes.
In custodial or otherwise coercive settings, respect for autonomy is reflected in practice:
A simple test to run is if the affected person later saw the record of how their autonomy was considered, would it reflect a genuine effort to protect their interests, or only a legal formula?
Full public transparency is not possible in intelligence. However, complete internal opacity is unsafe. Ethical blind spots grow where decisions are not questioned and where no one is required to ask, “Are we still comfortable with this practice?"
Institutional reflexivity is a form of internal transparency that allows the organisation to examine itself clearly, recognise discomfort, and adjust before an external investigation or public controversy forces change.
The leadership is responsible for making reflexive review a regular activity, not an occasional response to failure.
Following major operations, a structured review is conducted that:
Key insights are anonymised where necessary and stored in an internal ‘ethical lessons’ collection so that future planners can see how similar dilemmas were addressed.
Clear, well-publicised pathways, such as designated officers, secure communication channels, or dedicated panels, allow staff to raise ethical concerns outside their direct line management. Leaders must commit to:
A simple test, when an external oversight body asks, “How do you learn from ethical mistakes?’ is, can the organisation point to specific routines and records, rather than only broad statements?
Intelligence analysis loses value when it is adjusted to fit what influential stakeholders prefer to hear. Politicisation seldom appears as a direct instruction. It emerges as softened language, missing caveats, selective use of information, or the exclusion of inconvenient assessments.
The leadership responsibility is to protect analytic work from political influence, both external and internal, and to demonstrate that protection in the record.
For topics that are politically sensitive or high-profile:
Senior leaders affirm and model the principle that intelligence is designed to inform policy decisions, not to promote a particular policy position.
Analysts are allowed to record a concise minority view in key assessments when they disagree on method, confidence level, or interpretation. This dissent:
This process preserves alternative interpretations and reduces pressure to converge on a single, politically convenient narrative.
Many ethical failures do not arise from a single serious breach. They develop through a series of individually reasonable decisions that, taken together, create practices that would not have been endorsed at the outset. Emerging technologies and new data sources can accelerate this gradual expansion, making it harder to detect.
The leadership responsibility is to look ahead and ask not only “Is this justified now?” but also:
Alongside strategic planning, agencies hold regular exercises in which diverse teams consider:
The results are recorded in a concise “ethical risk register” that sits alongside traditional risk and threat registers.
Before deploying a new or powerful capability, leaders record:
This makes it harder for exceptional measures to become routine without deliberate re-authorisation.
Considered individually, each pillar is modest. Taken together, they form a practical agreement between leaders, their staff, and the public they serve:
These disciplines can be embedded in existing artefacts: collection notes, decision logs, operational reviews, and oversight reports. They do not require new slogans or complex frameworks. They require leaders to state clearly what they value, connect those values to real decisions, and keep those commitments visible when operational and political pressure increases.
Intelligence professionals operate close to the limits of what a democratic state permits. That boundary will always be disputed and re-examined. The E.L.I.T.I.E pillars do not remove this tension. They offer a structured way for leaders to manage it without losing ethical direction.
By turning ethics into a set of daily disciplines, establishing boundaries, leading by example, protecting informed autonomy, promoting transparency through reflexive review, safeguarding independent analysis, and planning with ethical foresight, agencies can conduct demanding operations while still leaving a record that an independent external reviewer can understand and assess.
This is the central test of ethical leadership in intelligence: not whether difficult choices disappear, but whether those choices remain explainable, proportionate, and worthy of the trust they require.
AI tools were used to assist with structuring and editing for clarity. All views expressed are those of the author(s) and are offered to support open, respectful discussion. The Institute for Intelligence Professionalisation values independent and alternative perspectives, provided safety, privacy, and dignity are upheld.