Numbed by Spin, Desensitized to Risk

Numbed by Spin, Desensitized to Risk

So much of what circulates across safety is little more than spin or propaganda. The best way to interrogate such discourse is by Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) Skills in CDA help reflection and insight into how text, narrative, myth, symbol and story are infused with power, politics, bias, moral bias, ethics and cognitive bias (https://safetyrisk.net/perception-heuristics-cognitive-bias-and-the-psychology-of-safety/ ).

A good place to start is with any of the following:

•  The Handbook of Discourse Analysis           
•  Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis   
•  The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis     

None of this is taught anywhere in safety globally yet, it is the foundation of understanding the subjectivities of any text or testimony, absolute essentials for any incident investigation. CDA is foundational 101 for any lawyer which is why they are called to investigate serious incidents and why nonsense like iCam, tap root, root cause, 5 whys and any of the safety investigation methods are slammed in court. Most often the court will use these methods against testimony.

As much as safety doesn’t believe it, semantics and linguistics are critical to understanding messaging, purpose and constructed meaning. There is no such thing as neutral; objective text or narrative. So, the beginning of any development of skills in investigation must start with the bias of the investigator, the hermeneutic of the investigator and the temperament of the investigator. (We will explore all three in a minute).

None of this is of any interest to any of the popular safety investigation methods on the market, making them all suffer under their own undisclosed agenda, bias and lack of transparency in ethic and politic.

The mythology of objectivity is alive and well in safety investigations discourse and is complete nonsense. The beginning of ethical professionalism is owning and being transparent about one’s own bias. This is not even done in the AIHS Chapter on Ethics which of course make the Chapter unethical.

Let’s take a look at just three biases that must be considered if an investigation is to be ethical:

1. If the investigator comes from a background in engineering, science or safety you can be sure the bias is towards objects, behaviourism and quanta. My bias is towards social psychology, persons and relationships. This is why the best investigations will always be Transdisciplinary.
2. There is no narrative without a hermeneutic (theory of interpretation) and acknowledging that hermeneutic is critical in differentiating between forms of information and data that are accepted, rejected or translated into a palatable form that suits the hermeneutic of the investigator. In safety, it is critical that this bias in particular be owned and acknowledged. Because Safety believes its own mythology, this is never acknowledged.
3. Finally, the temperament of the investigator (as well as cultural background) is critical to how, why, where and when an investigation is undertaken. It also becomes a vital factor in how one works with trauma, distress and suffering in any event. There is no investigation product on the market in safety that considers pastoral care as essential to how one approaches persons involved in an event.

So, we see in incident investigations that Safety always finds the outcome to its investigations that best suit its agenda, usually spin and propaganda associated with learning when there has been none. Affirming your own assumptions about how risk works is not learning.

If you undertake CDA on any of the common safety investigation methods you will find a bias towards linear causality, objects and confirmation of assumptions. Most of the time the discourse conforms to the hero-villain dialectic and binary opposition so popular in safety discourse. This is also true for the so called ‘Just Culture’ narrative (https://safetyrisk.net/the-discourse-of-just-culture-in-safety/ ) and the myth of ‘no blame’ culture. In many safety investigations I have look at, most simply confirm popular safety myths and have no interest in learning.

We have just started our free online studies in SEEK (https://safetyrisk.net/free-modules-seek-and-semiotics/ ) and where do we start? With understanding the three biases listed above. SEEK doesn’t solve all problems and it ends up in a new semiotic method that uses visual thinking to understand events and relationships. Such a start is much better than playing games with objectivity and imagining that investigations are an objective causal exercise.

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Dr Rob 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.