One of the big issues this week in US news is reports of an
individual named Omar Gonzalez who was able to climb over the protection fence
surrounding the White House, run across the yard, get in the main door and far
into the building before being taken down by Secret Service agents. (For more
information on the story, click here).
As more details have emerged in the fallout from this story,
one of the more interesting and controversial details was that the alarm system
on the main door of the White House that was supposed to alert guards of an
intruder was silenced. Reports after the incident suggest that the alarm was
intentionally silenced because complaints from the White House ushers’ office
that the alarm was too loud. (More details can be found in the news report
above).
Obvious questions come to mind after hearing this. After
all, the alarm system was designed to protect the President and the first
family. Why would we silence it simply because it’s annoying to some? One
congressman criticized the leadership of the Secret Service for allowing the
alarm to be silenced, say:
The agency needs a solution that goes deeper than more fences and more people. It must examine what message is being sent to the men and women who protect the president when their leader sacrifices security to appease superficial concerns of White House ushers. (Source in article linked above.)
On the surface this seems like a legitimate point. However,
we must realize that this statement is made with the benefit of hindsight. All
it does is explain what should have
happened, not why what did happen, did
happen. This is an important distinction to make because if we ignore the
reasons why people behaved as they did we doom ourselves to repeatedly running
into the same issues over and over. It’s easy for us to say what people should
or should not do after an incident such as this, but if we stop there the
obvious implication is that the fault lies with the people, and if we replace
those people (or discipline them into compliance) then the problem will be
solved.
But what if it’s not a human problem? What if by trying to
fix the people involved we are engaging (intentionally or not) in scapegoating?
Consider the following other potential causal factors and
fixes:
- The usher’s office is reported to have requested silencing the alarms because of frequent malfunctions and false alarms. Shouldn't we just fix the alarm system?
- If the ushers had problems with the alarm systems, could we perhaps investigate moving the ushers’ office to another location, away from the alarms?
- Is the alarm system the only defense the White House has?
The fact is that if all we do is blame individuals for this
problem we miss the complexity behind this incident and we trick ourselves into
a false sense of security as we create a solution where there may be no problem
and generate no solution for the real problems inherent in the system. Yes,
they should not have silenced the alarm and, yes, they should have fixed the
alarms. But for those of you who work in facilities with alarm systems that
malfunction – how often do those get fixed immediately? Most facilities don’t
have the resources to do so. And in an environment with many false alarms,
would we be surprised that people in the area take steps to reduce the volume
so they can get their work done?
Unfortunately this is another example of our tendency to
search for blame, rather than search for solutions following an incident. In
the safety world we see this all the time, as well as in other environments
(here’s another example we talked about in the past). Research and
experience suggest that our tendency to search for who to blame following an
incident is corrosive to our ability to learn from incidents. And if
that’s true then we are faced with the reality that our rush to blame following
incidents may make us feel good temporarily, but actually may be making us less
safe. If we really want to make progress in in reducing risk, increasing
safety, driving creativity and innovation, and making the world a better place
then we must let go of the need to blame. Our priority should be to learn. If
at the end of a fair and just learning process we find that blame is
appropriate (it almost never is) then we can take what steps are appropriate.
But these knee-jerk blame responses have to stop or we can expect more of the
same.
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