Willful Blindness

The legal idea of willful blindness holds people responsible for what they could have known and chose not to. Margaret Heffernan turns it into a theory of organizational failure. Her argument is that the biggest threats are rarely hidden. We fail to see them because of love, ideology, fatigue, comfort with people like ourselves, fear of power and the plain wish to avoid conflict.

Heffernan spent eight years as a BBC documentary producer before running internet and software businesses in the United States, and has since taught at the University of Bath School of Management. That mix of journalism and management shows: each chapter pairs psychology research with case studies drawn from business and public life.

Kirkus called it a brisk and sharp-eyed book whose villains come from the headlines, including Kenneth Lay of Enron, the investors who never questioned Bernie Madoff and the executives at BP. The book was shortlisted for the 2011 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award and has been compared with the work of Malcolm Gladwell and Nassim Taleb. Kirkus also noted that well-read readers will find little that is wholly new; the value is in the synthesis.

It belongs on the shelf of compliance officers, risk managers, auditors, analysts doing due diligence and anyone who sits on a board.

1. Blindness is a choice. Most failures happen in plain sight. The question is not whether information was available but why no one acted on it.
2. Affinity distorts judgment. We trust people like ourselves and ideas we already hold. Diverse teams and deliberate challenge counter that pull.
3. Hierarchy suppresses bad news. Obedience and the wish to belong make employees go along with wrongdoing, so leaders must actively ask for dissent.
4. Overwork breeds error. Fatigue and overload reduce the ability to notice problems, a direct risk on long-hours trading floors and deal teams.
5. Listen to Cassandras. Whistleblowers are often ignored or punished. Organizations that protect them catch fraud and failure sooner, as Madoff's victims learned too late.

Heffernan works through the forces that produce blindness one at a time, moving from the individual mind to groups and institutions, and ends with the people who refuse to look away.

1. Personal biases. Early chapters show how we favor people and ideas like our own, how love and loyalty stop us seeing faults in those close to us, and how strong convictions filter out evidence that contradicts them.
2. Limits of the mind. She looks at fatigue, overwork and cognitive overload, and at the choice to avoid information that would be painful to know.
3. Obedience and culture. Chapters on following orders and on corporate culture explain how hierarchy and the urge to belong lead ordinary employees to go along with wrongdoing.
4. Bystanders and distance. She examines why groups of witnesses fail to act, and how physical and organizational distance from consequences lets people ignore harm.
5. Work without morals. She considers how incentives, targets and pressure detach people from the moral consequences of their work.
6. Cassandras and seeing better. The closing chapters turn to whistleblowers and others who saw what was coming, and to practical ways that individuals and organizations can make dissent safe.