How to NOT Educate Safety People in Ethics

I had to laugh at the amateurish nonsense put out as ‘Ethics for Safety Professionals’ that is neither about Ethics or being professional. This is fairly typical of an industry that thinks Ethics is a bolt on to safety. And, you’re going to get all of this nonsense in 5 contact hours!

Reminds me of the last fiasco training in ethics I saw offered by a safety engineer! (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/). Yes, that’s right, an Engineer with no qualifications in Ethics telling you to ‘do the right thing’. Could you be any more naïve and incompetent. Ah yes, but as long as you know safety you are automatically: an ethicist, an Indiana Jones of culture, a Linguists, Anthropologist, social psychologist, a Religious Studies expert and every stop to Central Station.

When you look at what is offered in this course you see quickly that it hasn’t been developed by a professional ethicist and is just more safety indoctrination in deontology.

There is so much essential foundations stuff missing in this course it is a wonder one would parade this about as a course of value. There is nothing in this course on moral philosophy, the difference between morality and Ethics, styles of ethics, forms of ethics, the nature of power, schools of thought in Ethics, the law and ethics, ontology, the critical problem of zero, fallibility and ethical orientation etc etc.

Hey but this is safety, as long as you get a few more meaningless post-nominals after your name you can count more CPD points to no-where.

The worst and most dangerous thing about this kind of training is that people will leave the study thinking they have some kind of competence in Ethics. It’s like a safety person thinking their safety degree makes them a lawyer. And you can be sure if there ever a serious accident companies actually call a real legal professional not a safety amateur.

Of course, without a foundational course in Ethics in a safety qualification this kind of stuff is just window dressing. 5 hours in Ethics is nothing compared to the weeks and months of wasted study in the standard safety degree on regulation, law and systems. If you have done a 3 year safety degree/diploma and count up the study hours in wasted nonsense this 5 hours accounts for 0.001% of knowledge needed to act professionally. And without a solid foundation in Ethics, the use of the word ‘professional’ is projected fiction. Hey, but who cares, tokenism is the safety way.

If you are studying in any real profession, Ethics is foundational to your degree and invests study ours in excess of 120 hours to this critical subject. Of course, to review the safety curriculum (https://safetyrisk.net/isnt-it-time-we-reformed-the-whs-curriculum/) is too hard for Safety and if there is a review, Safety always gets an Engineer anyway to do the job (https://safetyrisk.net/brady-review-nothing-new-no-way-forward-2023/ ).

Well done, Safety.

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Prof. Robert Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

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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.