When Feedback Fails: Lessons from Optus

In the wake of recent events at Optus, we’ve seen that feedback culture isn’t a “nice to have”, it’s a safeguard.

In just the past few months, Optus has faced two separate crises: A nationwide outage that left Australians unable to reach emergency services - with at least three deaths under investigation (ABC News, Sept 2025) - and a $100 million penalty for unconscionable sales practices targeting vulnerable customers (ACCC, Sept 2025).

At first glance, these seem like very different issues: One technical, one commercial. Yet both point to a deeper, more human concern... a breakdown in feedback culture.

What Happens When Signals Are Missed

In the emergency-call outage, customers and emergency services reported failed connections to Triple Zero (000), yet internal escalation processes did not immediately trigger action (CNA, Sept 2025).In the sales misconduct case, frontline employees and store managers allegedly raised concerns about selling complex products to people who couldn’t afford them, and they were ignored.

Across both situations, warning signs were present. The signals existed. The issue was what happened next.

A strong feedback culture ensures that when issues surface (from customers, employees, or systems) they are heard, escalated, and acted on quickly. When that loop breaks, consequences follow: Customers can lose trust, staff disengage, and in rare but devastating cases, lives are at risk.

Feedback Culture Is More Than a System

Many organisations equate feedback culture with surveys, dashboards, or annual reviews. In reality, it’s a daily practice, a shared understanding that:

• Every voice matters, regardless of role or hierarchy.

• Raising a concern is seen as an act of care, not criticism.

• The first person to notice a problem is the first person empowered to act on it.

When leaders respond defensively, when feedback is delayed, or when problems are dismissed as “one-offs,” the organisation silently teaches people to stay quiet, and over time, that quiet can become costly.

Continuous Improvement: Listening, Learning, Adapting

A resilient feedback culture doesn’t eliminate mistakes; it ensures mistakes become learning opportunities. This mindset, common in high-reliability and safety-critical industries, treats every incident as data. It asks:

• What early warnings did we miss?

• What made it hard for people to speak up?

• How can we make it easier to act next time?

Leaders who embed this mindset create organisations that fail fast and forward: They learn quickly, adjust, and prevent repetition.

Benchmarking feedback culture against global best practice (from aviation, healthcare, or energy sectors) can help organisations test whether their listening systems are truly robust. 

For Leaders: Turning Insight Into Action

To strengthen feedback culture in your organisation, leaders can:

• Model openness. Show curiosity, not defensiveness, when feedback arises — whether it’s a concern that needs to be addressed or an idea that could unlock opportunity.

• Simplify escalation. Make it easy for people to raise both problems and possibilities without fear of judgment or bureaucracy.

• Close the loop. Demonstrate that feedback of all kinds — from issues to innovations — leads to action and learning. Let people see how their input creates meaningful change.

• Invest in psychological safety. Build teams where speaking up is expected, where ideas are explored, and where mistakes are treated as part of progress rather than failure.

• Celebrate learning. Recognise the value not only in identifying issues early, but also in spotting opportunities that move the organisation forward. Celebrate the behaviours that make continuous improvement possible.

A strong feedback culture does more than prevent problems, it helps teams evolve. When people feel safe to share what they see, think and imagine, organisations gain early warning systems and early insights. Both are essential to growth, resilience, and innovation.

The Broader Lesson

The events at Optus remind us that culture is not confined to values on a wall. It’s revealed in moments of pressure: When calls drop, when customers complain, when staff speak up.

Feedback is information and in the right culture, information saves time, money, and sometimes, lives.

How Coaching and Support Can Strengthen Feedback Culture

Improving feedback culture rarely happens by accident. It takes deliberate design, consistent reinforcement, and leadership behaviours that make people feel safe to speak honestly.

Coaching provides the space leaders often lack - a confidential environment where they can reflect on how they listen, respond, and lead under pressure. A skilled coach helps leaders notice their own patterns: the times they unintentionally shut feedback down, the assumptions that shape their reactions, and the blind spots that others may hesitate to raise. Coaching also supports leaders to find the confidence and safety to raise feedback of their own, to speak up about issues or opportunities they see, even when it feels uncomfortable or uncertain.

Consulting and tailored training programs can then turn that awareness into action. By mapping feedback channels, clarifying escalation processes, and developing the interpersonal skills that underpin psychological safety, organisations can accelerate and embed cultural change from within - creating systems and habits that make open communication the norm, not the exception.

At Abilitise, we’ve seen how coaching at the individual, team, and organisational levels helps transform communication, collaboration, and trust. When leaders are coached to listen deeply and respond with curiosity, their teams follow. Over time, a genuine feedback culture takes shape, one where people speak up early, ideas flow freely, and learning from mistakes becomes a sign of strength rather than fault.

In the end, building a feedback culture isn’t simply about process or policy. It’s about care - care for people, for customers, and for the shared purpose that holds an organisation together.

At Abilitise, we partner with organisations and their leaders to strengthen that care through coaching, consulting and leadership development, helping them cultivate cultures where feedback fuels growth, and growth builds trust.

If you’d like to explore how coaching or leadership development could strengthen feedback culture in your organisation, we’d love to chat. Book an obligation-free consultation at www.abilitise.com.au or contact us at info@abilitise.com.au

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