Sifting the Chaff from the Wheat in Safety

I have discussed the skill and wisdom of discernment previously:

• https://safetyrisk.net/wisdom-discernment-and-an-ethic-of-safety/
• https://safetyrisk.net/the-need-for-discernment-in-risk-and-safety/
• https://safetyrisk.net/social-psychology-applied-to-the-discernment-of-risk/

I have also discussed the nature of so much fraudulence in the safety industry:

• https://safetyrisk.net/safety-fraudulence/
• https://safetyrisk.net/the-safety-scam/
• https://safetyrisk.net/how-to-run-a-safety-scam/

I was contacted recently by a colleague who told me he had registered for an ethics in safety course, being taught by a safety person with no expertise, qualifications or experience in ethics (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-the-expert-in-everything-and-the-art-of-learning-nothing/ ). Is Safety so naïve and un-discerning that it can be so easily conned? If we put the word ‘safety’ or ‘professional’ in front of something does that make it so? Surely anyone who claims the word ‘professional’ ought to have the skills and wisdom to work out what has no value and is fraudulent?

The trouble is, we already know, that there is no easier industry to pull off a safety con (https://safetyrisk.net/theres-no-other-place-like-safety-for-a-good-con/). Safety is an open market for the best fraud (https://safetyrisk.net/best-fraud-in-safety-wins-this-is-the-way/; https://safetyrisk.net/hands-up-the-best-safety-fraud/). How easy it is for slick marketing and a few slogans to round up people happy to part with their money on a slogan with no methodology or method. How easy it is to promote a program or book run by safety engineers with no expertise, experience or qualifications in culture, psychosocial health, ethics and learning.

Indeed, if you are in safety, the best advice is, to avoid anything that uses ‘safety’ as a prefix. For example, anything entitled ‘safety ethics’ will; not be about ethics. Similarly, ‘safety leadership’ is rarely about leadership just as ‘safety culture’ has little to do with culture.

The metaphor of ‘separating the chaff from the wheat’ is a powerful one for the process of understanding discernment, forting, filtering and hermeneutics. This metaphor was used over 30 times in the Bible to make it clear that discernment is a part of critical thinking when it comes to the perception of fraudulence.

Chaff (the husk) is separated from the wheat (grain) by ‘threshing’ and ‘winnowing’. These are processes that help the husk to be separated from the grain. The husk has some usefulness but cannot be digested by humans. This idea of separating the useful from the less useful is a metaphor the safety industry would do well to think about.

This can be done by a simple process of questioning. However, safety has already relegated questioning to the negative and deems questioning as anti-safety. Unfortunately, critical thinking in safety is deemed as being disloyal to Safety. This is what sets the industry back and prevents it from ever becoming professional.

• How strange this industry fixated on deficit thinking (injury rates) is so deluded by the fear of the negative! How strange this industry that loves the delusion of nothing (zero) (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/zero-the-great-safety-delusion/) and yet is so easily conned by everything.
• What a strange industry that only seeks knowledge from within itself?
• How strange this mono-disciplinary industry that thinks engineers are experts in culture, psychology and ethics?

Having worked in 5 real professions, this is not the case. Real professions don’t fear expertise or knowledge outside of themselves. Indeed, real professions welcome such expertise, even though such knowledge and questioning is confronting, critical and dissonant. Real professions seek expertise outside of the club and realise that club mentality is not good for professionalism.

• Critical thinking of safety is NOT anti-safety, it is pro-safety.
• Critical thinking in safety seeks to mature the industry and make it better, more mature.

Without the ability to discern the chaff from the wheat, it is not likely that safety will ever become professional. Without a focus on discernment and critical thinking, Safety remains open for every con and fraud on the market.

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Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

Latest posts by Dr Rob Long (see all)

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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.