The crisis management strategy of "getting ahead of the story" has been taking a beating of late. Just weeks ago, the White House was so fearful of a never realized Fox News attack on Shirley Sherrod—the Department of Agriculture official accused of making insensitive racial remarks at a NAACP conference—operatives scrambled to have her fired before anyone had bothered to fully understand what she had said. This rush-to-judgment in the name of damage control resulted in a publicly embarrassed President Obama personally apologizing to Ms. Sherrod and USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack offering Sherrod an even better job than she'd had before.

Now we witness the hasty ouster of Hewlett-Packard CEO Mark Hurd, a man whose stewardship is credited with boosting the tech company's market capitalization by $45 billion. According to The New York Times, "a public relations specialist convinced the company's directors that H.P. would endure months of humiliation if accusations of sexual harassment by a company contractor against Mr. Hurd became public." The firm reportedly presented the board with a mocked-up article of the ridiculing coverage that awaited them if they failed to act. But an investigation found no improper sexual conduct, although it did uncover inaccurate expense reports totaling about $20,000, and subsequent media coverage has suggested that Mr. Hurd was racing to clean up the entire mess and cut off the board's inquiry.

One thing is for certain: It didn't end well. The board challenged Mr. Hurd. He didn't like it. It went south from there. He walked with $30 million in severance. And investors saw $7.9 billion in market cap fly out the window.

At our firm, we, too, are experiencing a bull market in clients desperate to "get ahead of the story." To be sure, there are times when it makes sense. If the offending organization is aware of a credible threat to public health, safety or the environment, it must act preemptively. If the organization has done something majorly wrong that is sure to come out, getting to the press and public first can positively affect the narrative. If the organization has reason to believe that others are poised to attack and mislead, or, if it needs to establish that it's not hiding anything, yes, getting ahead of the story is a viable strategy. There are other reasons.

But there are some important, common sense requisites to this approach, as well. You've got to make sure you first truly understand all of the key facts. You need to couple the disclosure with action, i.e., what are you doing about the problem you just admitted to? And, as evidenced in the two examples above, don't re-prosecute your last crisis. Yes, the White House gets routinely hammered by Fox and, yes, H.P. was understandably jittery because of the shellacking it took over its spying-on-board-members crisis of just months ago. Still, neither is an excuse to overreact. The Internet makes every crisis instantaneous, but big corporations—and the White House—can't afford to get it wrong.

This kind of trigger-happy crisis management comes chiefly from the world of scorched-earth electoral politics, where an allegation left unaddressed for three hours seems like an eternity. In that world, if you snooze you lose. But are your business and issue really that hot? Some are, but many are not. Take the time to get it right.