So much of what parades around safety focuses on Technique, what Ellul calls ‘the quest for efficiency’. The word is italicised to accentuate the difference between being technical and Ellul’s meaning. Everyone in safety ought to read his book The Technological Society (1964). Ellul was an amazing philosopher, lawyer, sociologist and critical thinker. His work is considered foundational reading in SPoR. Indeed, we study Ellul (who published 44 books), Jung and Kierkegaard here: https://cllr.com.au/product/module-24-jung-kierkegaard-and-ellul/

Whenever the quest for efficiency is made a priority, humans always pay the price in being dehumanised.

We see this is in any ideology that priorities ‘human performance’ over human ‘being’.

Sorry to say for all of those who love performance but, ‘being’ human is messy, inefficient, chaotic, uncertain and fallible. Human being is not efficient. If you want to learn to know someone and develop relationship, that takes time. Such a use of time is not efficient, some even call such inefficiency a ‘waste of time’ and, we all know that wasting time is ‘poor performance’.

We hear this kind of language in management ideology that loves to talk about ‘human systems and technological work interfaces’. Just read the tea leaves folks, this is just more Technique masked by spin about ‘differently’ and ‘new view’ but it’s plain olde Technique – traditional safety.

Just because someone calls something a ‘new view’ in safety, doesn’t mean it is. When the ideology is the same, the language is the same, philosophy the same and the orientation is the same, its just traditional safety. Such a view has little idea about effective questioning.

In Mondi their theme is: ‘leadership is time and a simple cup of coffee’.

• If you are concerned about the use of time and efficiency, you will never lead.
• If you view safety through the lens of performance, you will never ask better questions.

In the ideology of ‘human performance’ (which we see in HOP), the focus is on safety outcomes. Unfortunately, any focus on a primacy on ‘human performance’ is an ethical and moral commitment away from valuing persons.

In performance ideology, the value is placed on what humans do, not who humans are.

 The language of ‘safety performance’ is about ‘safety outcomes’ not humanising persons. When your language is about performance, measurement, systems and controls, regardless of branding, you are in traditional safety territory.

The best way to learn about better questioning is not from ‘safety science’. The key to improving questioning is to critically question the appeal to authority fallacy (https://safetyrisk.net/is-safety-rational/). Just because a someone in safety writes a book on learning or questioning doesn’t mean they know what learning and questioning are. Afterall, Safety is so professional as declaring what is by what isn’t (https://safetyrisk.net/declaring-what-is-by-what-isnt-hop-as-traditional-safety/). Just because someone in safety declares something is a ‘truth’ doesn’t mean it is. Just because someone says their rhetoric is ‘wisdom’, doesn’t make it so.

If you want to learn about better questioning the last place to turn is Safety. Safety has no expertise in ethics, moral philosophy, personhood or social science, all essential to understanding the nature of questioning. This is why in Safety so often uses entrapment questioning considered ethical, when it is not. We see this so often in investigations. This is why Safety thinks binary questioning make sense. As long as the question is about ‘human performance’, is must be ‘better’.

‘Hey guys, come over here, we’re really doing something ‘different’, it’s a ‘new view’. ‘We’re not looking at human safety performance, we’re looking at human safety performance’. We’re not looking at causes of accidents, we’re looking at ‘pre-accidents’.

The emperor has no clothes on, but don’t tell him about it.

The key to understanding better questioning is to abandoned the ideology of ‘human performance’. Anyone loaded with the language of ‘human performance’ views the outcomes of human action as the lens for understanding human ‘being’. Such an orientation can never ask ‘better questions’.

The key to asking better questions is an orientation toward ethical personhood.

If anyone is out there in safety land spruiking stuff on ‘better questions’ but doesn’t mention the important of ethical orientation, it will have nothing to do with better questions.

The key to asking great questions is to be oriented morally towards the ‘other’ (person). I have given a few tips on this before:

The key to learning effective questioning has nothing to do with Technique and ‘human performance’.

We explore effective questioning in all we do in SPoR using the iCue method. In iCue Engagement we focus on persons, and not the outcome of their performance. We listen as a foundation to understanding what they need and what it important to them, not what we think the safety outcome should be.

If you want to learn about better questions then one of the best places to start is learning the iCue Method (https://cllr.com.au/product/icue-engagement-module-28/).