Paying the Price

In 2022, a UK outsourcing firm was fined £4.4 million after a cyber-attack exposed the personal data of over 100,000 employees. The breach began with a phishing email that two finance staff received. It was discovered that only one of them had ever been trained in information security, and the attack slipped through unnoticed until it caused severe damage. The ICO’s investigation found that this lack of preparedness was as much to blame as the outdated systems. It was a costly lesson in how the smallest training gap can turn a routine threat into a major crisis. That same pattern repeats across data, AI, and governance work, where cutting corners on training often proves to be the most expensive choice of all.

But, possibly not surprisingly, money has always had a way of dominating the conversation whenever staff training is discussed. The number on the invoice usually becomes the headline; the talking point in the budget meeting. Someone will ask if it's really necessary. Someone else will identify that the money could be better spent elsewhere. Another will wonder whether the organisation could handle it internally. Eventually, someone will suggest a shortcut, perhaps a neat little “cheat sheet” or a set of notes so that everyone can get the box ticked and get back to work.

And, of course, cheat sheets have their appeal. Those two pages of bullet points and diagrams feel quick and efficient. If they're laminated, they even look authoritative. But they're not knowledge. They're simply a snapshot, frozen in time, stripped of the depth and flexibility that comes from understanding. They can't teach judgement. They don't help when something unexpected happens, or when a situation falls into that grey space where the rules no longer give a clear answer. They offer the comfort of thinking you're prepared without actually making you so. (For more on this topic, please read my article “The Curse of the Cheat Sheet”)

And in the field of data governance, analysis and AI, this false confidence in not needing training can be extremely expensive.

Let’s take the example of a health research project where patient data is coded in a way that hides a small but important sub-group. A different coding approach would have revealed a dangerous side-effect for a particular demographic. Without that knowledge, treatment guidelines are issued that fail to protect those patients. In one real case, a rare reaction to a cancer drug went unrecognised for over a year because early trial data had grouped certain patient records together under a single code. The “price” here was not just financial. It was measured in unnecessary suffering and in lives cut short.

The wrong statistical test can cause equal damage. Numbers that look authoritative can be deeply misleading. Some years ago, a regional hospital reported that a new post-surgical rehabilitation method reduced recovery times by nearly 30 percent. The analysis was later shown to be flawed. The test they used had assumed a normal distribution of patient outcomes, but the data was heavily skewed. The supposed improvement disappeared once the correct method was applied. Unfortunately, by that time, the protocol had been rolled out to hundreds of patients and millions of pounds had been spent on equipment and staff training for a treatment that offered no real benefit.

Elsewhere, a large financial services company faced heavy regulatory scrutiny after its automated loan-approval system was found to be rejecting applications from certain ethnic groups at a disproportionate rate. Internally, managers believed the model was sound because it had passed an “internal compliance checklist” and the team had a one-page summary of fairness checks. No one on the project team had been trained deeply enough to understand that the data encoding methods they used introduced hidden bias. Regulators issued a substantial fine and required a complete overhaul of the system. The company’s name appeared in the national press for all the wrong reasons and public trust was damaged for years.

Of course, data governance failures can be equally costly. A local council in the UK was fined after an AI-powered document classification system mistakenly published sensitive personal records online. Staff had relied on a brief “how to” sheet that explained which settings to use, but the document had not been updated when the system’s default configurations changed during a software update. The result was a serious breach of data protection law. Beyond the fine, the council faced months of reputational repair and costly remedial work.

The thing is that these examples are not rare accidents. They're the predictable result of inadequate preparation. And proper training is the single most effective safeguard against them. But what you need to understand is that proper training does not begin when the first slide appears on the screen. The time you see on the training schedule is only the visible part; the result of large piece of work. Long before the day when training is delivered, a competent trainer will have studied your industry, assessed the regulations that apply to you, identified your specific risks, and built examples that relate to your work. They will have tested the exercises with others, more than once, to make sure they produce the right lessons. They will have updated materials to reflect the latest standards, and prepared to handle questions that are messy, difficult, and rooted in the reality of your business. This is no simple task.

This is what many fail to grasp. When you pay for training, you're paying for that large amount of invisible work as much as for the hours in the training room. You're paying for the trainer’s accumulated experience, their ability to make complex ideas stick, their knack for spotting when someone hasn't quite grasped a point, and their skill in closing those gaps before they turn into expensive mistakes.

The cost of skipping necessary training never arrives at a convenient time. Sometimes it comes quietly, months after a poor analysis has led to a faulty decision. Sometimes it comes all at once, in the form of a regulator’s letter or a public scandal. In the world of data and AI, fines can be large enough to destabilise even major organisations, and many come with official announcements that cement reputational harm in the public record.

There is also the human price. An employee who makes a serious mistake because they were not trained properly may, unfairly, face disciplinary action Their confidence can be shattered, stress builds, and it follows them home affecting relationships and health. In some cases, they leave the profession entirely, or lose their job, even if the real fault lies with the organisation’s lack of preparation. And of course they usually take with them years of experience that can't be replaced overnight.

Managers are impacted too. They have to explain why the right preparation wasn't given, and those conversations are rarely career-enhancing. Answering for avoidable failures is stressful. It damages careers. Often there is blame shifting and back covering and the wrong person ends up shouldering the responsibility. Sometimes this is even the person who identified the necessary training need in the first place. This passing of blame can sour working relationships between individuals and teams, creating an atmosphere of blame instead of collaboration.

That's why the real question is not “can we afford this training” but “can we afford to pay the price of going without it”. Cheat sheets and minimal coverage may look cheaper today, but they are usually the most expensive decision you can make. Proper, high quality training equips people to spot when something is wrong, to question results that look suspicious, to choose the correct approach, and to understand the difference between a convincing number and an accurate one. It leads to a well prepared, empowered workplace.

Of course, it's one thing to talk about the harm caused by poor training in terms of mistakes and missed opportunities. It's entirely another to add up what the price is in pounds, penalties, and lost contracts.

Fines for breaches of data protection laws are no longer a token sum. Under the UK GDPR, the Information Commissioner’s Office can impose penalties of up to £17.5 million, or 4 percent of annual global turnover, whichever is higher. In 2023, a large technology company was fined £12.7 million for failing to keep customer data secure. Their internal documentation had clear bullet points on security requirements, but frontline staff had not been trained to recognise or respond to specific risks in their systems.

Legal costs can snowball just as fast. A health trust facing litigation over a faulty AI-assisted diagnosis tool spent more than £2 million in legal fees before the case even reached court. The AI had been procured with only a basic user guide, no detailed training, and no proper understanding among clinical staff of how the system reached its conclusions.

Lost contracts are another cost that rarely makes the headlines but hit just as hard. As an example, a particular logistics firm bidding for a government contract was rejected after failing a compliance audit. The audit found that their predictive routing system had no documented training programme for staff using it. The contract was worth £8 million over four years. Losing it meant not only the loss of revenue, but also a public record that they had failed a compliance check; a mark that followed them into the next bidding round.

And then there are the costs you pay for years. Once a breach or a compliance failure is public, insurance premiums rise. Your legal team’s retainer goes up. Extra staff time is diverted to remedial work. All of it eats into margins long after the original mistake has been “fixed” on paper.

We know that proper training isn't a magic bullet, but it is one of the few proactive measures that can reduce all of these risks at once. It gives staff the knowledge to avoid the errors that trigger fines, helps maintain the documentation that satisfies auditors, and demonstrates to partners and regulators that you take your obligations seriously. It's a sensible investment in both your staff and your business.

Of course, skipping proper training of your staff (or yourself) may feel like its saving you money. But in reality, it’s gambling with the some of the most expensive things you own. You see, money can be earned again. A reputation, once damaged, is slower to restore, if it ever returns at all. And the harm to reputation isn't just about what appears in the press. In many cases, the real damage happens quietly. Clients decide not to renew contracts. Potential hires look elsewhere. A long-time partner moves their business to a competitor without explanation.

A charity handling sensitive medical data learned this the hard way. An internal analysis of service outcomes was published on their website with identifying details still embedded in the file metadata. No one had been trained in how to check for this kind of hidden information. The breach made the news briefly, but it lingered far longer in the minds of donors, some of whom pulled their support. The charity survived, but annual donations dropped by 15 percent for three years running.

You see, when lack of proper training impacts individual lives, misdiagnosed patients, unfairly denied loans, or people wrongly flagged as high risk, the human toll extends far beyond the workplace. A statistical oversight in a clinical trial might delay the rollout of a treatment for years. A biased AI screening system might block qualified applicants from jobs that could have changed their lives. These are not “regrettable incidents” in the abstract. They are the lived experiences of people who will never know they have paid the price for someone else’s mistakes.

This is why proper, high-quality training is not a box-ticking exercise. It's an act of protection: for the organisation, for its reputation, and for every person whose life might be touched by the work it does.

In the end, the price will be paid. The only choice is whether to pay it now for competence, clarity, and protection, or later in fines, in reputation, and sometimes in lives.