A rule that triggers on allegation alone can be used, and so it will be

The argument

A second argument concerns incentives rather than fairness to the individual. If an allegation is by itself sufficient to end a position, then anyone with a reason to remove the person holding it has an effective and inexpensive method available. Opponents list the obvious candidates: rivals for the office, people facing discipline from the office-holder, parties to a dispute the office-holder has decided, and those with a grievance of some entirely different kind. The claim is not that allegations are generally false. It is that a rule operates on whoever chooses to use it, and the honest and the dishonest have equal access. The effects, opponents argue, reach beyond the individual cases. Where such a rule is understood to be in force, those in authority adjust their behaviour in anticipation: declining to meet junior colleagues alone, withdrawing from mentoring, keeping travel and social contact to a minimum, avoiding anyone whose situation looks complicated. The cost of this caution falls hardest on the people who most need access to senior figures, which is to say those without existing connections, and it is paid by them regardless of whether any allegation is ever made. The design opponents prefer is one in which the outcome tracks what is found rather than what is said. Prompt enquiry, interim measures while it proceeds, real protection for complainants against retaliation, and consequences that follow a finding, up to and including dismissal. On this account that arrangement keeps the sanction attached to the conduct, gives the complainant a process capable of producing a result that holds, and removes the incentive to use an allegation as a mechanism.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who disagree answer that the risk described is speculative while the harm of leaving people in post is recorded in the history of institutions that did so. They argue that false allegations are rare and costly to make, that the fear of them has been used to resist every mechanism of accountability in turn, and that withdrawal from mentoring is a choice made by the office-holder rather than a consequence of the rule, and one institutions can address directly.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Available to anyone willing to make one passes over what making one costs: exposure, disbelief, and damage to the complainant's own position, which is why the larger recorded problem has been allegations never made. [Rejecting P2] That a rule can be misused is true of every rule, including those that protect the accused, and is a reason to design the process with care rather than to withhold the measure. [Rejecting P3] Withdrawal from mentoring is a decision taken by the office-holder, so treating it as a consequence of the rule makes the predicted harm depend on the choices of the very people the rule constrains. [Rejecting C] Consequences attaching to what an enquiry finds is compatible with standing aside while the enquiry runs, so the conclusion does not follow from the premises offered.