The Use of Ignorance in Health & Safety Decisions

In this episode of Risk! Engineers Talk Governance, due diligence engineers Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis explore the use of ignorance in health and safety decisions and how it’s being used to not make decisions and not deliver the best safety outcomes for organisations.

Richard and Gaye examine the growing trend of shorter board tenures and how this lack of long-term intellectual property can affect diligent decisions, especially when directors lack deep familiarity with the technical hazards their organisations face. They also discuss how decision-makers often surround themselves with people who won't ask uncomfortable and challenging questions, or filter information that reaches Boards.

They also discuss optimism bias and the commercial tendency to dismiss risk as pessimism. They argue that the SFAIRP (So Far As Is Reasonably Practicable) framework demands more than just taking action on known hazards. It requires a clear, documented justification for inaction — and that justification needs to be revisited continuously as technology, knowledge, and circumstances evolve.

They conclude that genuine safety governance isn't about guaranteeing nothing bad will ever happen, but being able to look the next of kin in the eye and say, hand on heart, that everything reasonable was done.

The SFAIRP moral imperative versus commercial reality.

If you’d like us to cover a specific topic or have any feedback we’d love to hear from you. Email admin@r2a.com.au.

For further information on Richard and Gaye’s consulting work with R2A, head to https://www.r2a.com.au, where you’ll also find their booklets (store) and a sign-up for their quarterly newsletter to keep informed of their latest news and events. 

Gaye is also founder of Australian women’s safety workwear company Apto PPE https://www.aptoppe.com.au.

Transcript

Megan (Producer) (00:00):

Welcome to Risk! Engineers Talk Governance. In this episode, due diligence engineers, Richard Robinson and Gaye Francis discuss the use of ignorance in health and safety.

(00:13):

We hope you enjoy the chat. If you do, please support our work by giving us a rating and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform. And if you'd like more information on R2A, our newsletter and resources, or have any feedback or topic ideas, please head to the website www.r2a.com.au.

Gaye Francis (00:34):

Hi, Richard. Welcome to another podcast session.

Richard Robinson (00:37):

Good to be here again, Gaye.

Gaye Francis (00:39):

Today we're going to talk about the use of ignorance in health and safety and in the way that sometimes it's used to make decisions or how they gain information.

Richard Robinson (00:51):

Well, not make decisions, might be more relevant.

Gaye Francis (00:56):

True, true. And how it's being used to maybe not give the best safety outcomes for organisations.

Richard Robinson (01:06):

Well, this is actually a number of levels. I think we were sort of just talking about this in advance, trying to work at what we're going to say.

Gaye Francis (01:12):

Always a good thing!

Richard Robinson (01:13):

What we observed is being used at a number of levels because we've observed the churn at board level.

Gaye Francis (01:17):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (01:17):

And then we observed a whole lot of directors turn up who don't know much about this stuff. And what was that line from that director you said?

Gaye Francis (01:25):

You wouldn't expect us to know all of the hazards that our organisation is exposed to.

Richard Robinson (01:29):

Well, the ones that can kill a maim, the people who work there, yes, you would.

Gaye Francis (01:33):

I think just explaining those couple of points. We've been in business (R2A) for a while, Richard, a long time. And the boards that we've seen over the years, I think their tenures are becoming shorter. They used to be, 20 years ago used to have quite stable boards that have been with the organisation for a longer period of time. We're now seeing typically that tenures are sort of in that five-year sort of span. And I know that there's strategies that go on that you don't turn your whole board over every time and you try and keep half. But the continuity of information in a board, especially when you're talking about boards that are responsible for technical issues or technical organisations and service delivery organisations, that you've got a longer horizon. They're typically boards that are going to be running, or sorry, organisations that are going to be running for 20 years and 30 years, 50 years for that investment cycle for renewal of infrastructure and things like that.

Richard Robinson (02:36):

Dams and things like that. Remember I was on a ministerial panel and the most notable result of which is that I discovered that the minister's never wrong. That's the first thing I discovered. But one of the reasons why, as far as I can tell it happened, was that they used to make sure they had a dam safety expert on the board and then that person retired, just age and things like that. And rather than appoint a new dam safety expert, they said, "No, no, we'll appoint a commercial board member and you can just retain consulting engineering advice as required." Well, that's not quite the same as having a person who actually knows about dam safety on the board.

Gaye Francis (03:10):

Yeah. Well, it's got two things there, hasn't it? Because the board has to know what questions to ask.

Richard Robinson (03:16):

Correct.

Gaye Francis (03:16):

And when to bring in the dam safety expert. And then they've got to interpret that information to make those decisions.

Richard Robinson (03:23):

Well, that's one of the reasons why I think I've observed is that ignorance is actually being used as a tool, because sometimes what seems to happen, if you've got a board member who's perhaps overly active in a certain area, when their retirement comes up, you find a new board member with other skills who doesn't actually share that same interest. But that means, in a sense, you're surrounding yourself with ... Well, it's a bit like I keep talking about autocrats. What they do is surround themselves with yes people, so they don't actually get the information they actually need. And the whole point of our democratic process is that you try to get the right information, even if you don't want to hear it.

Gaye Francis (03:58):

And I think going back to that, and they're getting the information to maybe from a governance and a liability management aspect rather than improving the safety aspect of an organisation long term.

Richard Robinson (04:13):

Well, it's very Owellian. I mean, it's one of those things.

Gaye Francis (04:16):

It's very what? Sorry.

Richard Robinson (04:17):

Orwellian.

Gaye Francis (04:18):

Orwellian.

Richard Robinson (04:19):

George Orwell, 1984 and all that sort of good stuff.

Gaye Francis (04:22):

Oh, okay. Please fill us in. Enlighten.

Richard Robinson (04:26):

I'm not sure I can give you a rapid summary of the entire book on this particular podcast.

Gaye Francis (04:32):

What's the relevance of?

Richard Robinson (04:33):

Well, that's just the basic way totalitarian systems work. You basically give people the information that you ... So they only know what you need them to know.

Gaye Francis (04:40):

Want whem to know.

Richard Robinson (04:42):

Want them to know. So they'll give the answer the way in which you wish to get it.

Gaye Francis (04:45):

Right.

Richard Robinson (04:46):

I mean, that's partly why you put people in silos. But if you leave people ignorant, well...

Gaye Francis (04:51):

But I thought one of the key things and the role to the board was to ask the difficult questions and to challenge the status quo in a way.

Richard Robinson (05:03):

Well, in a sense, the whole reason for the Work, Health and Safety legislation because boards weren't doing it when awful things happened.

Gaye Francis (05:10):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (05:11):

And so I mean, I don't know if people ever really is on the ball, but if you're a long-term director and they saw something awful happen.

Gaye Francis (05:21):

So do you think part of it is that because we've gone to shorter term tenures that people aren't seeing these bad things?

Richard Robinson (05:28):

Yeah, but I think it's got to do with the entire hierarchy. I remember I told a long, long time ago, I got seconded as a safety manager for an oil company and I had to go and look at all the oil terminals around Australia. Now, what I didn't know is the fellow that I got seconded to, he was a personal friend of the Managing Director of said company, and he'd been with the company for about 25, 30 years, and the whole organisation knew him. And when he turned up, because they'd had some health and safety problems, and when he turned up doing this audit with me tagging long taking notes and generally doing the legwork, which is what young people do, what I'd sort of worked out later was because when this guy turned up, the organisation knew who he was, and they knew he had a direct connection to the CEO, and so that if this fellow said, yeah, that's an issue, I will bring it to the attention of the CEO and he'll bring it to the board.

Gaye Francis (06:18):

It was escalated.

Richard Robinson (06:19):

I can't guarantee what the result will be, but I can guarantee it will be raised. Everyone believed him. And the direct consequence of that was their health and safety statistics abruptly improved. But that required somebody who'd been with the organisation for a long time that everybody knew and trusted. And that trust part was the key bit.

Gaye Francis (06:37):

It's the trust thing, isn't it? And the communication up, I think, and we've talked about this, not necessarily in this season, but in other seasons about the truckload and the information load that is actually going up to the boards in the risk and health and safety space, that it's not understood and it's sort of become, oh, we keep putting all of this information up, but it's not in a way that can be done.

Richard Robinson (07:02):

Wheel barrow loads and nobody understands it.

Gaye Francis (07:04):

They don't understand it. How do you actually get through it and get to the bits that are actually important?

Richard Robinson (07:10):

Remember, I mean, it's a while ago now, there used to be this thing, I forget, it was sort of one of those James Reason-ish things where you actually sent somebody to go and talk to everybody. I remember the funniest one was, remember that water company I got the job for? The bigger water company had taken over the smaller water company and they'd been forced to upgrade the water supply to a Class A water, which was just a holiday settlement. So basically a lot of people turned up in summer, the rest of the year, everyone just used tank water, and didn't care. But anyway, they'd been forced to upgrade it. But what had happened was because the water supply had been upgraded, all the tourists turned up in summer and drank the place dry where previously they avoided the water.

Gaye Francis (07:47):

So you add your supply and demand bit as well.

Richard Robinson (07:51):

But the funny thing was, when I turned up, I started wandering around talking to the people who work for the smaller water company. And I was asking all these questions and this guy, some character turns up in a suit asking the guy actually doing the job, the question, you can sort of see them look at you with a fair degree of suspicion, what are you and who are you and what do you want? And I was busy writing down these notes, what this guy said. And he was looking at me astonically said, you're actually writing down what I'm saying, aren't you? And I said, yeah, I'm really writing down what you're saying. And I said, I can't guarantee because the smaller company had been overwhelmed by the new company's rules and processes and they were just frustrated even though they had quite a good process in the team, they were just getting a hard time. And I said, look, I can't promise that anything will get done, but what I can promise is I always tell them competently what you guys are doing, the good bits are doing, the bad things that are happening. And I can promise them to tell you that. Now, I actually can't remember if the company did anything, that's our problem, we do our bit and then we move on.

Gaye Francis (08:52):

I do remember that job, but I think they took some of the cultural issues or the cultural benefits.

Richard Robinson (08:57):

From the small one.

Gaye Francis (09:01):

Into the big organisation

Richard Robinson (09:02):

I think they did.

Gaye Francis (09:03):

They had a really good team environment and culture of reporting issues. Whereas sometimes we see that issues in larger organisations are often buried and not escalated to the level that they need to be.

Richard Robinson (09:15):

Well, what's like that stoplight thing, which I think seems to have disappeared, the red, amber, green business where if you've been blocked by the normal line management getting something done, you had the right to report it and once a week, I think it was, the senior management got a red amber green. And if red meant that there was an issue that had been tabled, but nobody looked at it yet. Amber means it was being thought through. And green meant it had been dealt with. And every week, all senior decision makers, all GMs got a summary of what the troops were directly reporting.

Gaye Francis (09:44):

I think everybody in the organisation had access to that. So you could report a red issue and that would in the health and safety sphere.

Richard Robinson (09:52):

You didn't want to be a serial whinger because that would have other consequences.

Gaye Francis (09:56):

That's right. And I think people were primarily using it for those kill and maime, those really...

Richard Robinson (10:00):

People were frustrated by things that weren't <getting done>. Well, the one that particularly annoyed them was when something broke down, a remote SCADA instrument broke down, somebody goes out and fixes it and a week later it's <broken> again and they do it again and there's bung again, you do it again. Well, after a while, you don't keep fixing it. It's got to be properly dealt with.

Gaye Francis (10:21):

Yes. So it's closed.

Richard Robinson (10:23):

But if it's an important thing that's going to stop something critical happening, then you really need to make sure it's working. So it was a backup to the QA system, I suppose.

Gaye Francis (10:32):

So I think we talked about ignorance being endemic and that sometimes it's being used as a tool to not give the right information so decisions can be made. But we also had in this one that we might talk a little bit about testing optimism bias.

Richard Robinson (10:49):

Yeah. Well, that's sort of ... I mean, in the commercial world, the commercial world generally is a bunch of optimists okay because they sort of look at the upside downside and risk and say, ooh, we could make all this money and get all these things and this, that and the other thing.

Gaye Francis (11:00):

I think they also look at it and say for the health and safety aspects, oh, that's not going to happen, so we don't have to worry about it.

Richard Robinson (11:07):

Well, it's more than that. They sort of say all those risk people, I mean, they're a bunch of pessimists, they'll never let us do anything. And at one level, they're probably right, but they still have to think it through. I mean, I think the whole point of the due diligence part, it isn't that you can't be optimistic, but if the pessimist put up something, you must explain why it's not reasonable to do it.

Gaye Francis (11:29):

And I think that's what comes back to that SFAIRP approach, isn't it? And we've said this a number of times, it's often more important to say why you're not going to do something compared to justifying why you are going to do something.

Richard Robinson (11:40):

I did get that enquiry about the report we did several years ago now saying, 'you need to do these things', and the question came back, well, it's not been done anywhere else on the site. And I said, well, there's a reason for it, there's a hazard next door. But at the time, that's what was needed to get it through all the regulatory hoops and loops. So to change it now would be very difficult and it wasn't prohibitively expensive. That's the point.

Gaye Francis (12:04):

I think it also comes back to, just on your point there, the SFAIRP approach is a snapshot in time, but it doesn't mean that you can then put it on the shelf and let it go. Technology's changing all the time, more information's becoming available, you should be able to make better decisions with the information. So I think this is something that has to be a continuous improvement, continuous process as an ongoing governance exercise at that board level.

Richard Robinson (12:37):

Yeah, that's right. If it can kill and maime. Then you need to show that you've done every reasonable practical thing you can to stop it going wrong. It doesn't mean it still can't happen. It's like that CFA (Country Fire Assoc) captain. He said, you know what? I know if I stay being a volunteer fire captain for another 10 years, <there will be> a fatality and I need to be able to look the next to kin in the eye. It's got nothing to do with insurance. It's got nothing to do with liability. I need to be able to look the next to kin in the eye and say, we had done every reasonable practical thing we could to make sure this thing wouldn't happen. But fighting bushfires is an inherently dangerous activity. There are lots of variables which we can't control. It's like the two young people who got killed the by the tree. But the tree that fell downhill, but they knew the wind and going up they were already retreating.

Gaye Francis (13:25):

Yes.

Richard Robinson (13:25):

They were trying to do every reasonable thing they can.

Gaye Francis (13:28):

Just bad luck, isn't it?

Richard Robinson (13:30):

But that's one of the reasons why we had that job to design cabins so they'd be more resistant. It still won't stop if a big tree hits it square, but it will deflect it.

Gaye Francis (13:39):

Well, that comes down to our whole theme around what this podcast season is SFAIRP, the moral imperative versus the commercial reality. So it's hand-on-heart stuff. Have we done every reasonable practicable precaution we can -- control we can -- that's reasonable in the conditions that we find ourselves?

Richard Robinson (14:01):

Well, it's a bit like the bushfires. I mean, like Black Saturday was 2009, we're now 20 years on.

Gaye Francis (14:08):

We're coming up to our once in a generation bushfire time again.

Richard Robinson (14:12):

And you go and look at the bush out there and it's all grown back and it's all looking lovely and I guess we're all moving back into the bush again, or at least a new set of people's moving back into the bush. The government has put in some new rules, but we're a bunch of optimists. It is lovely out there.

Gaye Francis (14:25):

Yeah. And why wouldn't you live out there? But I mean, there's things that you can do now that are practical (now), that you have to test whether they're reasonable or not. And I think it's that long-term vision that it has to keep going. And that's where we would probably, we've seen the downfall in organisations not having that really long-term outlook.

Richard Robinson (14:49):

It's like building bushfire bunkers. I mean, it's entirely impossible and practicable and it's probably another $50,000 when you buy a place in the bush. Maybe it's a good idea.

Gaye Francis (14:57):

But there's some facilities in those bush areas like we've seen at schools and things like that, that do have those in place.

Richard Robinson (15:06):

Well, only after the last <fires>.

Gaye Francis (15:07):

Yeah. But what I'm saying is that has been the change. So what is now reasonably practicable, and there's some organisations, would you put it in for a single house? Maybe, maybe not. But if you're inviting a whole lot of people to a location during bushfire season, then you may.

Richard Robinson (15:24):

Yeah, that's right because you can't ... Well, the program, better not say which school it is, but the program is they'll take the kids out of the edge if there's any kind of bushfire season around, but if they truly get stuck, they have a bunker.

Gaye Francis (15:34):

Correct, correct. All right. On that note, I think we're at the end. Thank you for joining us today, Richard. As we said, there's always a conflict between the moral imperative and the commercial reality.

Richard Robinson (15:48):

The SFAIRP moral imperative and the commercial reality.

Gaye Francis (15:51):

Okay. Thank you for that clarification. But we hope it's been an interesting conversation. Thanks, Richard.

Richard Robinson (15:57):

Thanks, Gaye.