The idea that people instinctively know what is right and wrong is naïve, immature and unprofessional. Anyone who lives in the real world knows that a host of things affect moral, cultural and ethical judgment. The same applies to the notion of ‘common sense’. There is no sensemaking that is held in common. Again, sensemaking is determined by a host of factors that are cultural, unconscious and ecological.

Knowing what to do right is conditional on a host of contextual factors that are NOT innate nor instinctive. Morality is learned in a cultural context. There is no such thing as an objective thing called ‘Just Culture’.

 The so called Just Culture of Reason and Dekker is a concoction from an undeclared bias that assumes a particular approach to Justice and Culture. Just do any simple Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) of the work of Reason and Dekker and you will soon learn what their undeclared moral philosophy is (https://safetyrisk.net/the-discourse-of-just-culture-in-safety/). However, if you are from Safety that is not likely because in Safety there is no education in Philosophy, Ethics, Linguistics or Discourse analysis in any safety qualification.

The strange thing about the Discourse in Safety about Just Culture (https://safetyrisk.net/understanding-just-culture/) is that is not about Justice or Culture. The Discourse of Just Culture is a safety agenda about the organising of systems.

Interestingly, the books written in safety about Just Culture never define Justice or Culture. Just more ‘common sense’ and ‘the right thing to do’ safety.

Most of the stuff written by Safety on Just Culture amounts to little more than ‘having your cake and eating too’. It’s always packaged as a morally superior position about ‘balancing safety and accountability’. Such is the simplistic way Safety frames a wicked problem (https://safetyrisk.net/tackling-wicked-problems/ ). We see this in discourse that suggests: ‘Ask What is Responsible, Not Who is Responsible’ (Dekker 2012, p13). This is no different than other HOP slogans like ‘blame fixes nothing’.

Head-in-the-sand safety (https://safetyrisk.net/consciously-safe-unconsciously-unsafe-or-head-in-the-sand-safety/) is alive and well in the sloganeering of traditional safety like HOP and Safety Differently. When one asks the question ‘what is responsible?’, one’s focus shifts to objects. Typical traditional safety.

When one is not afraid to ask ‘who is responsible?’ the focus shifts to persons. When this question can be asked, then it takes a mature moral philosophy to manage what follows ethically. Avoiding the question is typical simplistic unprofessional safety. Psychologically, avoidance rarely works out well.

When we look at Reason’s five concocted sub-cultures (https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Components-of-safety-culture-based-on-Professor-James-Reasons-A-roadmap-to-a-just_fig1_341338807) it’s all about organising and systems. This is what happens when one formulates a sense of an ethic or moral philosophy when your starting point is safety.

The best way to understand Culture and Justice is NOT to start by thinking about safety. When safety is one’s filter to consider anything, one’s filter warps what follows.

The first rule in considering Justice and Culture is to NOT start with safety. The purpose of Justice and Culture is NOT to keep people safe. By limiting sub-cultures to five foci, one has already limited critical thinking, cultural criticism and an ecology of an ethic of risk.

One of the first things we do in SPoR in studying ethics is to open up participants to the wicked problem of moral dilemmas. In moral dilemmas, there is no ‘right choice’. And, you won’t learn much about ethics if one is being told to focus on ‘what’ not ‘who’. We see the same traditional safety approach that names psychosocial health as a ‘hazard’. Of course, traditional safety, everything has a focus on objects.

How are you going to learn about the complexities of moral dilemmas and personhood by focussing on objects?

•  Sometimes, the most naïve approaches to safety are the most dangerous.
• Sometimes, naïve messages have the most dangerous by-products and trade-offs.
• Sometimes (depending on one’s culture, level of education and perception) the most dangerous safety messages are the most naïve and simple.
• Sometimes, what Safety does best is, desensitise people to risk by adopting naïve safety messages.
• Sometimes, what looks like the right thing in safety does more harm than good (eg. zero).

Perhaps this is a useful place to start: Moral Reasoning at Work Rethinking Ethics in Organizations (Kvalnes) (2015) (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332337425_Moral_Dilemmas/link/63e70a436425237563a44dd0/download?_tp=eyJjb250ZXh0Ijp7ImZpcnN0UGFnZSI6Il9kaXJlY3QiLCJwYWdlIjoicHVibGljYXRpb24ifX0).

How are you going to learn Ethics by avoiding the big questions of power, personhood, zero and culture? But this is what Safety does?

In Safety, there is no moral dilemma, it’s just do the right thing, use your common sense and check your gut!

Unfortunately, the free module in Ethics and Risk (https://safetyrisk.net/free-module-ethics-and-risk/) is oversubscribed and registrations have closed.