How to Enable Unethical Practice in Safety

There are a range of ways to make sure that Safety harms people in the name of no harm.

The first is to supress critical thinking and believe that any criticism of Safety is anti-safety. The opposite is the case. Nothing in safety will improve if criticism of Safety is interpreted as demonising Safety. The criticism offered in the blogs on this site, come from a concern about how people are treated by the industry. The book by Rosa Carrillo demonstrates that safety people themselves are also the most harmed by the industry Voices From the Resistance: https://safetyrisk.net/ohs-voices-from-the-resistance-rosa-carrillo/

Watching by and seeing people demonised by safety management systems symbolised in zero, also enables unethical practice. Expecting perfection from fallible people can only ever lead to brutalism. Zero is the single most unethical and immoral dominant idea adopted by Safety. Indeed, safety=zero. Zero is sponsored by regulators and associations who obviously believe that injury rates define safety (https://safetyrisk.net/the-sponsors-of-zero-are/).

Leaving the safety curriculum as it is, in the dark ages, also enables the industry to remain unprofessional and unethical. Naming people as hazards and the enemy of safety (https://safetyrisk.net/and-the-enemy-of-safety-is-humans/; https://safetyrisk.net/the-enemy-of-safety-humans/) is a classic example of just how low this industry can go. And who calls this grubby unethical stuff out? And this was promoted by the safety association! You know, the ones who wrote that amateurish chapter on ethics in the AIHS BoK.

To maintain unethical practice, it is most important NOT to read or study outside of the echo chamber of safety. For example, studying ethics from an engineer, with no expertise in ethics is the desired safety way (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/). Collecting meaningless post-nominals in safety after one’s name, doesn’t make one an Ethicist!

Holding blindly to positive psychology and fearing the negative is a sure way to avoid confronting the need for deconstruction and critical analysis. We see this fixation with positive psychology in the SD, S2, HOP, NV and RE movements that are yet to articulate a methodology, method or ethic of risk. It’s one thing to expose the unethical practices of safety but without an alternative method, it’s just back to traditional systems with a few slogans tacked on.

If you are up for the challenge of embracing critical thinking about risk in a positive and constructive alternative, you can study here: https://cllr.com.au/

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Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

• Critical Thinking Needed More Than Ever in Safety - January 21, 2025
• Selling Safety and the Safety of Selling Safety Culture - January 19, 2025
• Hearing Voices - January 18, 2025
• You Can’t ‘Bust’ Myths - January 18, 2025
• There is No Such Thing as an HRO - January 18, 2025

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.