• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

SafetyRisk.net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE
    • Slogans
      • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
      • When Slogans Don’t Work
      • CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
      • 500 OF THE BEST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
      • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
      • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
      • Safety Acronyms
      • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
      • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
      • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
      • Safety Slogans List
      • Road Safety Slogans 2023
      • How to write your own safety slogans
      • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
      • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
      • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
      • Safety Slogans for Work
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • Free Hotel and Resort Risk Management Checklist
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Social Psychology Of Risk
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Dr Long Posts
    • ALL POSTS
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no Hierarchy of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • THEMES
    • Risk Myths
    • Safety Myths
    • Safety Culture Silences
    • Safety Culture
    • Psychological Health and Safety
    • Zero Harm
    • Due Diligence
  • Free Learning
    • Introduction to SPoR – Free
    • FREE RISK and SAFETY EBOOKS
    • FREE ebook – Guidance for the beginning OHS professional
    • Free EBook – Effective Safety Management Systems
    • Free EBook – Lessons I Have Learnt
  • Psychological Safety
    • What is Psychological Health and Safety at Work?
    • Managing psychosocial hazards at work
    • Psychological Safety – has it become the next Maslow’s hammer?
    • What is Psychosocial Safety
    • Psychological Safety Slogans and Quotes
    • What is Psychological Safety?
    • Understanding Psychological Terminology
    • Psycho-Social and Socio-Psychological, What’s the Difference?
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • It’s not weird – it’s a psychological safety initiative!
You are here: Home / Communication and Consultation / Conforming and Questioning in Safety

Conforming and Questioning in Safety

September 22, 2019 by Dr Rob Long 8 Comments

 

imageCass Sunstein’s tidy little book Conformity (2019) raises many issues that people in safety need to think about. The book starts by discussing the many social influences that affect decision making, demonstrating that the simplistic ideas of BBS and zero are nonsense. I have mapped many of these social influences here as a free poster download: https://spor.com.au/downloads/posters/

The issue of conformity raises associated questions of obedience, identity, belonging and non-conformity. The foundation of developing safe procedures is based on the idea that it is best to conform. However, in the face of turbulence in organisations and change in the workplace, when is it best to question, challenge and consider NOT conforming? When is it best to adapt, change, flex and create? Weick called this ‘bricolage’ in Managing the Unexpected. Questioning procedures, instructions and orders, demands skills in conversational and Socratic questioning, entertaining doubt and a sense of vision for trajectory and imagination. All of these are not skills encouraged by a culture of compliance (https://safetyrisk.net/you-dont-want-a-compliance-culture/). The tricky part of all of this is knowing when, why and how and being prepared to put one’s values on the line.

Sunstein explains in Chapter Two just how the psychology of compliance works. He also demonstrates how this leads to disaster through what he calls ‘cascades’. The effect of cascades in conformity are much more powerful in large organisations than those that are small and adaptable. Once a bureaucratic juggernaut has been put in place and endorsed by a myth/symbol like zero, it is nearly impossible to not conform. In the same chapter Sunstein discusses ‘How to Break and Make Cascades’.

Unfortunately, when a culture of compliance has been established, questioning is interpreted as defiance and is then politicized (https://safetyrisk.net/confirmity-in-conformity/ ). Once defiance has been named and politicized then the person associated is demonized. This is further empowered when the ideology takes on the status of a rite and religious sacred act. In this way, the industry doesn’t have to mature and change. ‘Fortress safety’ is fundamental to the dynamic of association and why the safety associations delight in zero.

I receive mail each week from safety people who either want to leave the industry or have just been sacked because they have questioned something. Often trouble comes when the mythologies of management (https://safetyrisk.net/lemmings-for-lemmings-in-leadership-and-risk/) are questioned around attributions of measurement or the meaninglessness of some procedures. Strangely, management seem to expect that safety people should be the most compliant of all employees!

Sunstein also discuses the importance and skills of silence and the perception needed to pick the right fight. Unfortunately, this requires skills in ethical critical thinking, something not taught in the safety curriculum.

Sometimes it’s hard to work out what matters most unless one can see the philosophical and ideological foundations beneath something. For example, tackling zero in a large organization may seem pointless, yet it forms the foundation for many processes of dehumanization that follow. The trouble is, with the global mantra for safety set as zero, any challenge will lead to losing your job. The compliance industry of safety based on zero will never invite debate, questioning or contesting ideas. When the world is interpreted through the religious discourse of zero, any questioning must be demonized.

This is why I have developed a number of free videos, blogs and books to help.

https://vimeo.com/230093823

https://vimeo.com/172195306

https://vimeo.com/133737229

https://vimeo.com/120019541

https://www.humandymensions.com/product/for-the-love-of-zero-free-download/

https://www.humandymensions.com/product/fallibility-risk-living-uncertainty/

Sometimes the best way to question the ideology of zero is to point people in the direction of these resources and to later hold a reflective conversation. In that way one is not directly put in the firing line and open to the demonization and politicization of the industry.

For helpful blogs just do a search on this site for ‘zero’ and there is an avalanche of help.

Zero, The Maintenance of a Dangerous Idea from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

  • Bio
  • Latest Posts
  • More about Rob
Dr Rob Long

Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions
Dr Rob Long

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual) - January 23, 2023
  • Getting the Balance Right in Tackling Risk - January 23, 2023
  • What is SPoR? - January 23, 2023
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety - January 23, 2023
  • Afraid to Let Go of What Doesn’t Work in Safety - January 17, 2023
Dr Rob Long
PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Communication and Consultation, Robert Long, Social Psychology of Risk Tagged With: conformity, socratic questioning

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. bernardcorden says

    February 13, 2020 at 7:52 PM

    This is just and abridged regurgitation of Remember Charlie.

    Reply
  2. bernardcorden says

    February 13, 2020 at 7:52 PM

    Here is another interesting article from Counterpunch:

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/20/working-in-america-paychecks-for-silence/

    Reply
  3. Willem Muurling says

    February 13, 2020 at 7:48 PM

    Here’s Mike Rowe’s (From the TV-show Dirty Jobs) idea of Safety First. He nails it!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RrhkMk2zY

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      February 13, 2020 at 7:52 PM

      The whole language of hierarchy in safety is nonsense. Safety simply doesn’t get it. All values compete in life and all values are situational, including safety. This kind of simplistic stuff just keeps safety more dumb.

      Reply
  4. bernardcorden says

    October 14, 2019 at 10:00 AM

    This is just and abridged regurgitation of Remember Charlie.

    Reply
  5. Willem Muurling says

    October 14, 2019 at 1:39 AM

    Here’s Mike Rowe’s (From the TV-show Dirty Jobs) idea of Safety First. He nails it!!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0RrhkMk2zY

    Reply
    • Rob Long says

      October 15, 2019 at 7:02 AM

      The whole language of hierarchy in safety is nonsense. Safety simply doesn’t get it. All values compete in life and all values are situational, including safety. This kind of simplistic stuff just keeps safety more dumb.

      Reply
  6. bernardcorden says

    September 22, 2019 at 4:48 PM

    Here is another interesting article from Counterpunch:

    https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/09/20/working-in-america-paychecks-for-silence/

    Reply

Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below Cancel reply

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,495 other subscribers

Introduction to SPOR – FREE!!

SAFETY MYTHS SERIES

The Mythic Symbology of Safety

Posture Myths and Holistic Ergonomics

Safety Mythbusters

Don’t Be Emotional! Another Safety Myth

Tackling the Challenge of Heuristics in Safety

The Myth of Normal

NEW! Free Download

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Rob long on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Matt Thorne on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Anonymous on Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Jason on How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Rob Long on How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Admin on How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Rob Long on 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Gustavo Saralegui on 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Rob long on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Wynand on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Rob Long on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • simon cassin on To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Rob Long on Records of safety activities: evidence of safety or non-compliance?
  • Matt Thorne on Free Online Workshops
  • Rob long on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Risk Diversity on Book Launch – For the Love of Zero – in Portuguese
  • Rob Long on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Risk Culture Builder on No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Mark Taylor on All Things Must Pass in Risk

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Footer

VIRAL POST – The Risk Matrix Myth

Top Posts & Pages. Sad that most are so dumb but this is what safety luves

  • Free Safety Moments and Toolbox Talk Examples, Tips and Resources
  • 500 OF THE BEST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2023
  • Road Safety Slogans 2023
  • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Safety Acronyms
  • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
  • 15 Safety Precautions When Working With Electricity

Recent Posts

  • Welcome to the Nightmare, Safety Creates its Own Minefield (as usual)
  • Getting the Balance Right in Tackling Risk
  • What is SPoR?
  • How Bias Inhibits Learning in Safety
  • Afraid to Let Go of What Doesn’t Work in Safety
  • When You Don’t Know What to do in Safety, Have Another Blitz!!!
  • Gloves and Glasses Compliance
  • A Case of Desensitisation – What Would You Do?
  • How to Leave the Safety Industry
  • The Mythic Symbology of Safety
  • Dark Waters, The True Story of DuPont and Zero
  • 400,000 Free Downloads
  • Am I stupid? I didn’t think of that…
  • Don’t Look Now Safety, Your Metaphor is Showing
  • Ratio Delusions and Heinrich’s Hoax
  • To Err is Human, You Better Believe It
  • Culture as a Wicked Problem, for Safety
  • Safety Leadership Training
  • Cultural Orientation in Risk
  • The Stanford Experiment and The Social Psychology of Risk
  • Objectivity, Audits and Attribution When Calculating Risk
  • Records of safety activities: evidence of safety or non-compliance?
  • Zero, The Seeking of Infinity
  • Safety Leadership Essentials
  • What Can Indiana Jones Tell Us About Culture
  • Safety as a Worldview
  • The Loathing of Limits
  • Culture Cannot be Framed Through Safety
  • Free Online Workshops
  • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
  • Book Launch – For the Love of Zero – in Portuguese
  • Advancing Backwards in Safety
  • The ‘Noise’ of Safety, Silence and Practicing of Mindfulness
  • All Things Must Pass in Risk
  • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Sticks and Stones and the Nonsense of Zero Harm
  • Courting Infallibility in Safety
  • Indicators of Risk
  • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
  • No Good Reason to Follow Reason
  • Just as Well Culture Doesn’t Listen to Safety
  • What Are the Benefits Of Social Psychology of Risk?
  • Short-Sighted Lenses by Safety
  • Is Safety the Empire of Non-Sense?
  • No Wonder Safety is Confused About Culture
  • Building High Performance Safety Cultures
  • Understanding iCue, a Visual, Verbal, Semiotic Method for Tackling Risk
  • On Culture and Safety
  • Focus on ‘Meeting’ people, not legislation – a path to risk maturity
  • The Moral Harm of the Zero Cult

VIRAL POST!!! HOW TO QUIT THE SAFETY INDUSTRY

FEATURED POSTS

I’m 100% Certain About That….

Sanctimonious Safety

Daydreaming and Safety

The Domino Delusion in Safety

All Risk is Subjective

Understanding How People Make Decisions and Judgments

The Dance of Death and Randomness

Safety and The Sunk Cost Fallacy

Just Tell Your Mind to Stop It

Social Psychology of Risk in Canada

Social Media and Safety

A Critique of Pure Reason

ACTOR + ACTION + TIME = EVENT

Chronic Unease is Not Enough

The Soul of Mental Health

Beware of Hazardous ‘OINTMENT’

The Real Barriers to Safety

Understanding Conscience and Safety

Right Then Children, Sit Up Straight and Take Some Safety

An Engineering Dreamworld

Understanding Just Culture

Why Safety is Inescapably Theological

And the Dirty Word is – Fallibility!

Overcoming Safety Indoctrination

Safety Doesn’t Need Military Language

You Don’t Want a Compliance Culture

Study at The Centre for Leadership and Learning in Risk

Impacts of Cognitive Dissonance in the Workplace

A Question of Ethics

non-Leadership in Risk

Safety Superstitions

The Immediacy of Zero

Stop the Train I Want to Get Off

Safetie

The Challenge of the Consciousness Taboo

Introduction to SPoR – Free

Could Understanding Grey Be The Silver Bullet

An Introduction to Semiotics and Risk

Safety Surveying What You Already Know

Safety People Don’t ‘Save Lives’

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,495 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

WHAT IS PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY?

What is Psychological Safety at Work?