Sometime in the future, after tempers have cooled in Ferguson, Mo., over the shooting of Michael Brown, compliance officers should devour all the post-mortems and case studies that inevitably will come. The lessons that can be learned from Brown’s shooting, and police response afterward, are many. They dizzy the mind, really.

One week ago I thought the primary lesson from Brown’s death was obvious. I knew the prime fact, that Brown was unarmed and had his hands up when Officer Darren Wilson shot him. I’d seen the images of police in army gear moving through Ferguson like an invasion force. The issue for ethics & compliance officers was clear: that social media, and its ability to document misconduct in real time, can be a tool to improve conduct in the moment—a point the Ferguson police, in all their buffoonish militarized glory, missed completely.

Well, a lot can change in a week. Consider a few other allegations that have stumbled into public view in the last 10 days:

The scuffle between Wilson and Brown left the police officer with a fracture eye socket and half his face covered in bruises.

Wilson’s gun went off in his car at least once while he struggled with Brown, something loud enough to cause temporary hearing loss.

Brown was 6-foot-4 and nearly 300 pounds, far bigger than Wilson.

Brown had marijuana in his bloodstream.

Brown had roughed up a shopkeeper minutes before while robbing the man of some cigars.

Now add reports that at least 12 people have told police Brown ran towards Wilson after he raised his hands and said, “Don’t shoot!” and that Wilson had a spotless disciplinary record before this. Those details suggest another picture: that Brown aggressively confronted Wilson, who stumbled out of his vehicle dazed and confused, and fired in self-defense as Brown barreled toward him.

Do we know that the picture I just painted is accurate? No. We won’t know that for weeks, as St. Louis County prosecutors present their evidence to the grand jury investigating the shooting; evidence the ham-handed Ferguson police chief promises he will make public. And that’s the real lesson here. More than anything else I’m dismayed—and compliance officers everywhere should be, too—that the integrity of that investigation has been overrun by the social media standoff that ensued. Compliance officers need to study that dimension of the Ferguson case closely, or forget about the integrity of any investigation in the future that happens amid difficult circumstances.

We—compliance departments, law enforcement, individual investigators, society as a whole—will need to reconsider how we communicate about investigations as they happen. The standard refrain, “We cannot comment during an ongoing investigation,” won’t work in a future where everyone can have his own platform on social media to shout his views to the world about some sensitive case. That’s exactly what has happened in Ferguson.

To navigate sensitive investigations like the Brown shooting will take tremendous discipline in the future. It will never be easy to look a feverish public in the eye and tell them, “This will take a long time to unravel, and in the end you all might be wrong.” Nor will it be easy to walk that modern tightrope of some facts available for all to see on Twitter, and others hidden away while your hunt for the truth continues.

Still, that’s what will be required. And we would all do well to ask ourselves whether the culture within our organizations will let thorough investigations take place. The Ferguson PD did nobody any favors by responding to protestors with oppression rather than openness. It should have begun hiring more black officers years ago to stay in step with the demographics of its community. Likewise, the protestors did nobody any favors by looting stores and throwing rocks at police.

Instead of working assiduously to cultivate unity and respect, Ferguson allowed a culture of distrust to take root. And distrust was at the heart of what drove both Michael Brown and Officer Wilson to their encounter on Aug. 9.