Tesco today announced that it overstated its profits by around £250m in the last six months. This is the latest piece of news in what has been a bad year for the food retail company.

Dave Lewis, who joined Tesco as CEO just three weeks ago after 27 years at Unilever, says, "We have uncovered a serious issue and have responded accordingly. The chairman and I have acted quickly to establish a comprehensive independent investigation. The board, my colleagues, our customers and I expect Tesco to operate with integrity and transparency and we will take decisive action as the results of the investigation become clear."

Andrew Harvey, partner at Harvey Leach media training, says of Tesco’s communication strategy thus far, “The big miss is not mentioning the customers, that’s who the business is all about, customers need to be told in simple terms what’s happened and how it will affect them, if at all.”

The way that Tesco handles its communication from here on out will be crucial for both the new CEO and the future of the company. Lewis has avoided deflecting blame onto someone else, despite having just joined the company, and will have the opportunity to turn the crisis around over the coming months.

The company has temporarily suspended four senior members of staff and has bought in independent accountancy firm, Deloitte, legal advisors, Freshfields and the City’s chief regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority, has also been asked to review the situation.

Harvey says, “The test will be how Lewis handles it now, how open he is in the weeks to come and how he handles the delayed results announcement 23 October. All that will have a greater long-term effect than the headlines at the moment, which are negative, but if the situation is handled right they needn’t carry on being negative.”

This most recent disaster is yet another blow for Tesco’s shareholders and investors who have already seen share value drop £6bn since 21 July, when previous chief executive, Philip Clarke, was ousted.

Harvey doesn’t believe that the crisis is insurmountable, he says, “They’re a big company, they’ve had a good reputation. Very often companies go through this kind of incident, the test of the company is how it handles it going forward.”

The findings of the investigation, and the way that Lewis deals with the sharing of this information, will be crucial for the future of Tesco and its reputation.