The Danger of Absolutism: Why Privacy Implementation Isn't Black and White
To be blunt: I'm getting grumpy about absolutism in privacy consulting. This post was spurred on by a LinkedIn post I saw this week by a privacy lawyer, one that seemed particularly green but equally vocal!
You know the type. The consultant or lawyer who proclaims that "consent MUST be done this way" or "fair processing obligations are absolute" without any consideration for the nuances of your actual business. They speak in certainties, as if privacy law exists in a vacuum, completely divorced from the messy reality of implementation.
Here's what I've come to believe after years of working with development teams and CTOs: when someone is an absolutist about privacy requirements, it tells me they probably haven't spent much time in the trenches actually implementing these things.
Privacy Lives in the Gray
Privacy isn't black and white. It's a thousand shades of gray, and anyone who tells you otherwise is either inexperienced or selling you something (probably both).
I've worked with startups running on shoestring budgets and enterprise organizations with massive compliance teams. I've helped development teams implement consent mechanisms on legacy systems that were never designed with privacy in mind, and I've advised CTOs on privacy-by-design for greenfield projects. And here's what I can tell you: the "right" answer for one organization can be completely wrong for another.
Take consent, for example. The absolutist will tell you that consent must always be granular, unbundled, and require explicit opt-in for every single processing activity. And sure, in an ideal world with unlimited budgets, perfect technical capabilities, and endless time to fill in ROPAs (Record of Processing Activities) that's wonderful. But what about the three-person startup building their MVP to be sold in a region without this requirement? What about the mid-sized company running on a legacy CRM that would take eighteen months and half their annual budget to overhaul?
This is where risk management comes into play (and if you've read my writing before, you know I'm a big believer in risk-informed decision making). And whenever we consider a risk-based approach, we need to consider both likelihood and impact when we're making privacy decisions.
What Actually Matters
When I'm helping a team implement privacy requirements, I'm looking at a whole host of factors:
Their technical capabilities and constraints
Their budget and resources
Their size and organizational complexity
Their risk tolerance
The sensitivity of the data they're handling
Their industry and regulatory environment
Their current and planned jurisdictions
Their customer expectations
The practical realities of their existing systems
These aren't excuses to ignore privacy law. They're critical context for determining how to implement privacy law in a way that's both compliant and sustainable.
An absolutist approach that ignores these factors doesn't just create unnecessary friction, it can actually lead to worse outcomes. I've seen teams become so overwhelmed by prescriptive "must-dos" that they end up implementing nothing at all. Or worse, they implement something that looks good on paper but is so convoluted that users can't understand it, defeating the entire purpose of transparency.
The Real Risk
The danger of absolutism is that it provides bad advice disguised as certainty. It's tempting to believe that there's one "right" way to do things, especially when you're feeling overwhelmed by privacy requirements. But privacy implementation requires judgment, experience, and a deep understanding of both the law and the practical realities of your organization.
What you need is someone who can help you navigate the nuances. Someone who's worked with development teams to actually build these systems. Someone who understands that "it depends" isn't a cop-out—it's the beginning of a thoughtful, risk-informed conversation about what compliance actually looks like for your organization.
Privacy advice should be customized to your company, your constraints, and your context. Anything less is just noise.
If you're dealing with privacy requirements and getting advice that feels one-size-fits-all, I'd encourage you to ask more questions. Challenge the certainties. And if you need someone who can help you think through the nuances, I'm always happy to chat with your team about what privacy implementation actually looks like in the real world.