Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril

Margaret Heffernan is an entrepreneur, business leader and author. During a distinguished and varied career in the U.K and U.S., she's worked as a TV producer, the leader of a lobbying organization, and the CEO of several software companies. You can hear an Expert Interview podcast with Heffernan on the Mind Tools site.

So, keep listening to find out why we look the other way, why power can make people lose their moral compass, and how to create a less willfully blind society.

This book is an engaging, powerful and eloquent read with a serious message. The depth and breadth of the research behind its 12 chapters is reflected in the extensive notes section and bibliography at the back.

Throughout the book we learn that willful blindness happens in all aspects of our lives, and it often creeps in slowly, restricting our view little by little.

But why does it happen? Heffernan explains that our brains are constantly filtering our experiences, deciding what to notice and what to ignore. It's easier to select information that's familiar: it's the path of least resistance and it makes us feel secure. So, when something looks wrong, our brains dismiss the anomaly and we pay no attention.

Another reason for willful blindness is our tendency to surround ourselves with people who confirm our opinions and mindsets. This is only human. We tend to choose partners who are very similar to us. We choose to live in communities of like-minded people, and often work with them, too.

But although it feels natural, this uniformity can lead to a restricted view of the world. Studies show that when like-minded people get together, their views sometimes become more extreme. They're also twice as likely to notice information that supports their view than ideas that oppose it. This makes it harder to speak out against wrongdoing or injustice, because it feels like we're swimming against the tide.

Heffernan points out that we further restrict our views in our online behavior. In theory, technology gives us unlimited access to the rich diversity of the world. In reality, though, we mostly sign up to sites, apps and blogs that reflect our own views back at us. For example, when a music app recommends albums and artists, it's basing the suggestions on what you already know and like. It won't suggest classical music to a hard rock fan. The overall effect is to shrink our experiences, rather than expand them.

In business, there are too many examples of leaders ignoring festering problems: from dangerous working conditions and unsafe equipment, to faulty processes and corruption.

Because of their position, CEOs can find themselves out of touch with the real world, and also the smaller world of their own company. They're surrounded by obedient staff and driven by business targets. So it's easy for them to brush aside warning signs and downplay the negative consequences of their decisions.

When a tower exploded at BP's Texas Oil Refinery in 2005 and killed 15 people, it highlighted several forms of blindness. Heffernan reveals how problems had been known about, but were ignored.

There were seven layers of management and 4,800 miles between BP's decision-makers in London and the men operating the Texas City refinery. The company's business was wide ranging: it managed chemicals, lubricants, retail, and marketing, as well as refinement. So, when cost-cutting measures were put in place, it wasn't easy for senior managers to assess their impact on the entire workforce.

On the day of the explosion, the person in charge of the site was Warren Briggs. Because of the cutbacks, he'd been working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week, for 29 days in a row. Even if we ignore all the other contributing factors, exhaustion alone meant Briggs didn't really stand a chance of preventing the explosion.

For Heffernan this tragedy reflects a major modern problem: companies relying on technology to conduct global business. The internet makes us believe that distance doesn't matter, but it does. Virtual contact is not the same as talking eye to eye, or seeing a work environment firsthand. It's easier to ignore safety warnings when your only contact with the people at risk is via a screen.

Chapter Five, "The Ostrich Instruction," looks at how we like to put our heads in the sand, rather than face conflict and even change. Heffernan illustrates this with a case study from the little city of Libby, in Montana. When the building mineral vermiculite was found there, it created hundreds of jobs, changing the lives of its 2,500 residents.

Gayla Benefield's father got a job as soon as the mines opened in 1954. Despite the physical demands, he loved it. He was unaware that every day, he was breathing in toxic asbestos dust. He died of asbestosis aged 59, in 1971.

After her father died, Benefield began noticing that many of his former colleagues were also suffering from pulmonary diseases. What's more, so were their wives. She spent decades uncovering the truth, including how local medical professionals knew of the risk and stayed silent. You'd think that Benefield's tight-knit community would be grateful for this, but most people were angry. They didn't want to know.

In 1999 the story was picked up by an investigative journalist from Seattle and the whistle seemed well and truly blown. A report in 2000 showed the death rate in Libby to be 80 times greater than anywhere else in America. Even so, as late as 2002, Benefield's grandchildren were still playing in a schoolyard contaminated with asbestos. It took a further seven years for the authorities to declare a public health emergency.

Later in the book, Heffernan laments the decline of the type of investigative journalism that helped Benefield's campaign. She praises the work of websites such as ProPublica, which have taken up the baton to root out wrongdoing through journalistic legwork.

Chapter Seven, "The Cult of Cultures," explores how a misplaced sense of loyalty can cause willful blindness. When anesthetist Stephen Bolsin joined Bristol Royal Infirmary in the U.K. in 1989, he noticed that an unusually high number of children had died there after having heart surgery.

He traced this anomaly to one surgeon, who was taking too long to perform time-sensitive operations. Staff had known about this but stayed silent, and hospital investigators failed to look for answers in the most obvious place: the surgical team.

Bolsin spent three years gathering data to back up his observations, and shared it widely. But instead of winning support, he was shunned as a vindictive troublemaker and was told his career in the U.K. was over. He and his family eventually moved to Australia.

Speaking out against friends and colleagues like this takes a lot of courage. Heffernan applauds the American soldier Joe Darby, who blew the whistle on prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. When Darby made the decision to share photos of the abuse, he knew there'd be no going back to his old life. But he felt compelled to do the right thing.

In the final chapter, "See Better," Heffernan reassures us that willful blindness needn't define us. Most of us don't consciously choose to collude with what we know is wrong. We may not call people out on their bad behavior, but that's usually because it's just easier to go with the flow. It's an absence of voluntary action, rather than the presence of something negative.

She also warns that, while neuroscience is revealing, it mustn't be used as an excuse for abdicating responsibility for our decisions, behavior and blindness. We should never stray toward the excuse, "My brain made me do it."

So, how then can we "see" better? Heffernan suggests a two-pronged approach. We need to guard against the natural tendency toward willful blindness, and also equip ourselves to challenge the status quo when that's the right thing to do.

Heffernan says we should recognize the risks that come with a lack of diversity in our institutions, organizations, friendships, and neighborhoods. We need to actively encourage variety, to guard against internally generated blindness. Considering a range of views helps us to properly assess the consequences of our decisions.

In the workplace, asking several teams to solve one problem sends a clear message that there is more than one solution. It also helps to combat a desire to "please the boss" or to conform to a ready-packaged outcome.

Another tip is to jolt us out of familiar, obedient thinking and into new learning patterns. As an example, Heffernan cites an experiment involving two groups of people. One was asked to read a story by Franz Kafka that had a challenging, nonlinear style. The second group read a version that was linear and made sense.

Both groups were then asked to brainstorm a problem. The group that read the Kafka story came up with more creative and wide-ranging ideas than the other one. Researchers concluded that throwing people off their usual tracks can produce innovation and fresh thinking.

It also helps to encourage a feedback loop. One of Heffernan's contributors uses the term "zombie companies" to describe businesses where dissent is forbidden. Leaders can benefit greatly from being challenged, but the gulf created by power and hierarchy means it's unlikely to happen naturally. So they need to actively create opportunities to bring criticism out in the open, and turn it into something positive.

One CEO shares how she started a regular forum where her managers gave and received honest feedback. One by one, each senior manager, including herself, sat on a chair at the front of the room. They could listen, but not respond. While the comments weren't always easy to hear, they tended to be valid. Managers soon began to welcome the feedback sessions. It meant their shortcomings could be nipped in the bud before they became serious problems.

Auditors can provide this kind of feedback. They're a fresh pair of eyes brought into organizations, to challenge and test the way things are done. But be warned. They're human too, and when they spend too long in one organization they may start to absorb and favor its bias. Max Bazerman of Harvard Business School suggests that auditors should only work on limited, fixed contracts, and they should never accept a job in any company they've audited.

To call out wrongdoing, we need to resist the urge to be pleasers. Most people don't like conflict, but it's a necessary part of this process. Heffernan believes it could be made easier through educating children to embrace critical thinking, and encouraging them to ask questions. This isn't easy when our education systems are founded on intellectual obedience, so she calls for change, and not just in elementary and high schools. Business colleges should start teaching business history, she says, so that students can understand past mistakes and avoid repeating them.

A final but vitally important stand against willful blindness is to simplify and shrink our organizations and services. Heffernan wonders why some organizations celebrate their own complexity. Companies that grow too big are more susceptible to making mistakes. Regulation and accountability become more difficult. Heffernan says the financial crash of 2008 is a vivid example of this.

Though some of its cultural references date the book (it refers to the TV show "The Sopranos" and the fall from grace of the golfer Tiger Woods, for example) "Willful Blindness" is as engaging and relevant today as it was when it was first published in 2011.

Heffernan's call to action is clear: we need to be engaged with the world around us, and make an effort to understand it. There are so many issues facing our planet, from poverty to global warming, and they won't be resolved if we turn away.

Likewise, misjudged decisions and dodgy dealings will bring down organizations, unless someone blows the whistle. According to Heffernan, everyone should take responsibility when they see a problem go unchecked. We should stand up and get involved. If we don't, we share the guilt of any negative consequences.

We now know that humans can change right up until death. So, if you want to make a difference (in your workplace, your community, or the world at large) take Heffernan's advice and start asking questions today.

"Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore The Obvious At Our Peril" by Margaret Heffernan is published by Bloomsbury USA.

That's the end of this episode of Book Insights. Thanks for listening.