In safety, many are familiar with Hudson’s expression ‘chronic unease’ or Weick’s ‘preoccupation with failure’ but in SPoR we prefer to use two expressions: ‘Entertain doubt’ and ‘suspend your agenda’ to convey a similar meaning.

Of course, none of this aligns with the HOP con of ‘blame fixes nothing’ or ‘learning from normal work’. Indeed, this language is dangerous and leads Safety down a very dangerous path.

Indeed, if you read much of Weick he demonstrates clearly that a preoccupation with failure is the key to safety. Can you just imagine standing in court stating: ‘sorry your honour, Freddy died whilst we were learning from normal work in a pre-accident investigation’ … ‘But that’s OK, your honour, because blame fixes nothing’.

In SPoR, the nature of suspension is critical in understanding risk.

The idea of suspension resists the idea of closure, that things have been ‘fixed’ or ‘predicted’. Suspending doesn’t mean the same as indecision but just delay in judgement and the need to entertain uncertainty for longer.

In SPoR, this is also accompanied by the thinking of ‘satisficing’ that is, there comes a time when we must engage the ‘stopping rule’ and make a decision based on what we have. The law and regulation understand this as ALARP. Neither the law or regulation expect perfection.

Neither ‘entertaining doubt’ or ‘suspending your agenda’ are negative dispositions but rather the opposite. Both maintain a positive orientation until a decision must be made. Both these dispositions enable learning. Suspending judgement provides space for possibilities to come in whilst at the same time not disposing of purpose or meaning. Suspension is an act of slowing down movement and resists the idea of ‘tick and flick’.

I have often been engaged by safety people who claim they want to learn about SPoR but have neither suspended their agenda (they want to lecture me on what they know) nor entertain doubt (but simply tell me how I am wrong). Most of the time they simply seek agreement to a safety club or group to which they belong and adopt its discourse. And, if I don’t agree with the club slogans and mantras, you are made somehow ‘anti-safety’.

The key to entertaining doubt and suspension, requires skills in deconstruction and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This is not being doubtful but entertaining direct critical thinking and being able to interrogate what seems hidden.

In grammar we see suspension indicated by the ellipsis, those three dots where something is omitted because it is not needed. This was used in paragraph three of this blog. The ellipsis represents that something has been suspended in order to make sense of joining text. We do similar with the hyphen. In Greek, the word for suspension is ‘epoche’ and originates in the idea of holding off judgement and resisting dogma. The term is commonly used in Phenomenology to ‘bracket’ and wait for more to come. Derrida also used this idea of ‘bracketing’ to give more time to exploring and discovering what might be hidden in text.

Unfortunately, when organisations get too busy, there is no time for any of this. There is simply no time for conversation or listening, helping or caring that can come with suspension.

The human enactments of conversation, listening and helping take time and it seems that in risk and safety there is no time for the qualitative act of suspension. Safety seems too busy with systems, checklists and meetings that achieve very little. Whilst there is so much noise in the sector about ‘doing’ is there any time to suspend and ask if there is much of value in all that doing?

In SPoR, we know the quality of suspension gives much more value to humanising risk than busyness. The seduction of looking busy gives off the idea that much is being achieved when it is not.

However, to value suspension and to entertain doubt requires a re-orientation and significant unlearning for an industry convinced and conned by noise and busyness. Once suspension is valued, something has to give, what could that be? Where will you find the time for suspension and doubt? Maybe some of the quantitative activities that make Safety busy need to go? Maybe Safety should spend more time on what counts, than time on counting what doesn’t count?