Every murder mystery, the good and the bad, has one scene in common. At around the 75-minute mark, the detective, be they Poirot, Blanc, or (God help you) Clouseau, gathers all of the suspects into a room and, before announcing the name of the killer, lists all the reasons each suspect had to murder the victim. Everyone’s secrets are poured out like the tea, or scotch, the suspects always seem to be drinking in these scenes. The killer is eventually named, everyone else goes about their business, roll credits.

Much the same thing happens when a crisis strikes an organization. Many, if not all, of the secrets come pouring out. The media, government investigators, advocacy groups, and concerned citizens play the role of the detective. Like in the movies, some of what they find will be germane to the crisis; some will have nothing to do with it. But just like how the detective lays out all of the dirt, much or all of it will become public. What started as a small crisis in one area of your organization is suddenly several crises.

There are two main reasons this happens. One, every reporter covering this story wants to break news. Reporters love to have their work cited by other outlets. If a crisis is big enough, every major outlet will assign someone, or someones, to cover it. Editors don’t want them to come back with the same pieces everyone else is running. So, they will dig, and dig, and dig some more. Eventually, one or many of them will find something you don’t want made public.

The second is when a crisis hits, enemies come pouring out of the woodwork. In a crisis, the people who hate you feel emboldened to come forward with what they know. Disgruntled former and current employees, competitors, advocacy groups, and whistleblowers will approach media, hold press conferences, post things anonymously, or stand outside your doors shouting when they smell blood in the water. In today’s media environment, there is a place for every piece of bad news about your organization that anyone is privy to.

A great recent example of this is the shocking inclusion of a reporter from the Atlantic in the Trump Administration’s discussion on Signal of their plans to bomb Yemen. I am writing this on Thursday, March 27, Day 4 of this crisis, and there have been bombshell revelations from a variety of news outlets several times each day since it broke on Monday, March 24. Headlines include Signal group chat is only the latest dangerous intelligence lapse (The Hill); Mike Waltz faces new scrutiny over public Venmo account after Signal chat blunder (The Guardian); Days after the Signal leak, the Pentagon warned the app was the target of hackers (NPR); Private Data and Passwords of Senior U.S. Security Officials Found Online (Der Spiegel). Each of these stories is an embarrassment to the administration, and none of them would have been published if reporters and columnists weren’t nosing around looking for their own angles.

So, how do you prepare for this? As with most crisis handling, the most important work is done up front.

Eliminate as many potential crises as you can. This seems obvious, but it is the hardest step. Lock down as much of your operations as possible. Examine all of your vulnerabilities and have strong action and communication responses ready. Make sure you not only do solid backgrounding and training of all your employees, but continue to ensure their work is as strong as it should be. In the Signal example, Mike Waltz was extraordinarily careless when he added The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg to the chat. But the entire team should have known better than to discuss military activity on an unsecured platform. Heads should roll.

Develop good relations with the media prior to the crisis. I’ve told clients that you don’t want the first time anyone’s heard of your company to be when a federal agency pulls its trucks up to your door. The more you work with reporters who cover your industry or area, the more likely you are to be seen as good people who had something bad happen to them, instead of bad people who got caught. The Trump Administration’s horrific relations with most of the media hurts them on a daily basis; during a crisis it gets multiplied.

Handle the first crisis quickly. The sooner the original crisis goes away, the fewer days outlets will cover it, the fewer opportunities for new revelations. Earth-shaking news around the crisis will still come out if a reporter learns of it, but the midlevel embarrassments are much less likely to see air, print, or screens if people are no longer talking about it. This means quickly solving the problem, being clear and accountable in public, and making changes to prevent a recurrence. Had the Trump Administration, or the President himself, immediately said “this was an unacceptable breach, people are being fired, and we are reminding everyone what the proper protocol is for handling this material,” the scandal might have only lasted a week. With the stalling, denials, press-baiting, and other steps the administration took instead, I suspect you will still be hearing about it for months.

Make friends, inside and out. My high school history teacher had a slogan: happy people don’t revolt. Similarly, happy employees don’t forward confidential emails to The Washington Post. No one can make every employee happy every day, but the better you treat your team, the more likely they are to support you when times get tough. This can also be true with groups who might be critical of your industry. Offer to meet with your critics, explain your positions, and see if there is common ground you can reach.

In a mystery, once the credits roll, it’s over. In a crisis, it’s never truly over. The faster, and better, you handle a crisis, the fewer follow-up stories you’ll see.