On accepting fault

[BehindBlueI's]

I don't want to derail a different thread, but the concept of accepting fault, denying fault, or the middle ground of the passive language "confession" came up.

http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Until-Yesterday-Traditional/dp/0143124404 has a section on how tribal societies resolve accidental death/injury/etc at the hands of other tribesmen. The goal is repairing the relationship vs establishing fault. It's got it's pros and cons, but one thing it does is encourage a more honest conversation about what happened. In our impersonal society where it's quite likely you didn't know the person at all before you crashed into them at the intersection, sold them an item that broke, etc. our goals tend to be punishment and financial restitution. You are punished for admitting fault, and it requires a great deal of trust on your part that the other party won't take you to the cleaners with your 'confession.'

Just imagine yourself at a car crash where a pregnant woman was injured. A TV reporter says to you "what happened?" How honest do you feel you can be, even if you think you might be 10% at fault? Are you not apprehensive about your reputation? Possible financial penalties? At that moment, are you in self-preservation mode or honest concern about the other party and making them whole?

I've seen people in the medical community push for the same sort of thing in their M&M conferences so that doctors can be honest and the community at large can learn from their mistakes. This is well outside my expertise, but while these things are supposedly confidential they can be a career ender because people never truly forget. That's particular an issue when they don't know you. When people know you, they are more likely to forgive you if you aren't an asshat. The #1 indicator of which doctors will get sued for malpractice and which will not is their score of being likeable by their patients. Not how many mistakes they make, the severity of those mistakes, etc. Simply, people have more trouble suing someone they like. If the people at that conference know nothing about you other than you dicked something up that resulted in someone's death and you then apply for a position with someone at that conference....right.

So, if we want to encourage people to admit mistakes then actual forgiveness and moving past them is the way to 'reward' them for doing so. Establishing relationships before the issue pops up further encourages that. How we do that in our complex society with huge populations, I've no idea. Crucifying someone who does admit mistakes probably isn't the way to encourage the next guy to do so, though. People do what they are rewarded for or what they believe they'll be rewarded for. Every cop who does interviews and interrogations knows that. You've got to market the confession as being in the person's best interest, even if it's just for the mental relief and getting it off their chest.

[SLG]

I don't want to derail a different thread, but the concept of accepting fault, denying fault, or the middle ground of the passive language "confession" came up.

http://www.amazon.com/The-World-Until-Yesterday-Traditional/dp/0143124404 has a section on how tribal societies resolve accidental death/injury/etc at the hands of other tribesmen. The goal is repairing the relationship vs establishing fault. It's got it's pros and cons, but one thing it does is encourage a more honest conversation about what happened. In our impersonal society where it's quite likely you didn't know the person at all before you crashed into them at the intersection, sold them an item that broke, etc. our goals tend to be punishment and financial restitution. You are punished for admitting fault, and it requires a great deal of trust on your part that the other party won't take you to the cleaners with your 'confession.'

Just imagine yourself at a car crash where a pregnant woman was injured. A TV reporter says to you "what happened?" How honest do you feel you can be, even if you think you might be 10% at fault? Are you not apprehensive about your reputation? Possible financial penalties? At that moment, are you in self-preservation mode or honest concern about the other party and making them whole?

I've seen people in the medical community push for the same sort of thing in their M&M conferences so that doctors can be honest and the community at large can learn from their mistakes. This is well outside my expertise, but while these things are supposedly confidential they can be a career ender because people never truly forget. That's particular an issue when they don't know you. When people know you, they are more likely to forgive you if you aren't an asshat. The #1 indicator of which doctors will get sued for malpractice and which will not is their score of being likeable by their patients. Not how many mistakes they make, the severity of those mistakes, etc. Simply, people have more trouble suing someone they like. If the people at that conference know nothing about you other than you dicked something up that resulted in someone's death and you then apply for a position with someone at that conference....right.

So, if we want to encourage people to admit mistakes then actual forgiveness and moving past them is the way to 'reward' them for doing so. Establishing relationships before the issue pops up further encourages that. How we do that in our complex society with huge populations, I've no idea. Crucifying someone who does admit mistakes probably isn't the way to encourage the next guy to do so, though. People do what they are rewarded for or what they believe they'll be rewarded for. Every cop who does interviews and interrogations knows that. You've got to market the confession as being in the person's best interest, even if it's just for the mental relief and getting it off their chest.

Totally agree about forgive and forget concept, and anyone who is married knows how important it is, even if it can be hard to do sometimes. However, when people repeatedly lie about stuff (their backgrounds, for instance) and then lie about other things that are not as bad, it becomes harder to forgive and forget. At what point do you write them off as a liar? In my work, the first time it happens is the last time. Not as cut and dry other places, I suppose.

[Gray222]

Read a book about extreme ownership (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250067057) totally worth the read.

[BehindBlueI's]

Totally agree about forgive and forget concept, and anyone who is married knows how important it is, even if it can be hard to do sometimes. However, when people repeatedly lie about stuff (their backgrounds, for instance) and then lie about other things that are not as bad, it becomes harder to forgive and forget. At what point do you write them off as a liar? In my work, the first time it happens is the last time. Not as cut and dry other places, I suppose.

Well, first off I think we need to agree that the concept of lies is not black and white. We all lie, including to ourselves. You think there's anyone at your work place, including you, who's never told a lie? Never exaggerated to impress their buddies or try to de-pants a female barfly? Never pretended to empathize with a child molester to elicit a confession? Never agreed with some totally off the wall bullshit just to keep a suspect talking, sure I believe the FBI monitors you through implants in your head. Never fluffed a product for a sale?

Telling 3am that her missing tooth is barely noticeable or your boss that absolutely his kid is the smartest kid you've ever seen or heard of...that sort of lie tends to get rewarded and is generally socially acceptable. It will not get you the reputation of "liar". Lying on a probable cause or sales contract...that sort of thing is illegal and will get you hemmed up in more ways than just social ostracization.

With that out of the way, of course forgiveness requires both amends and a cessation of the problem causing behavior. At what point? I don't think there's any hard and fast rule. You'll cut more slack to someone you have a history with than a stranger, generally. You know more 'good' about that person to offset the 'bad' you just learned. The level of harm done by the lie, etc.

[peterb]

The aviation community recognized the importance of people being honest about their mistakes to improve safety, and set up a system to encourage reporting.
http://asrs.arc.nasa.gov

[SLG]

Lying occurs everyday, everywhere, and I would never say otherwise. I'm not talking about "allowable" lies though. Lying to a subject (which I still try not to do too much, since it's easy to lose their trust that way) is not what I'm talking about.

I lied to a girl at a bar one time, and it was a pretty off the wall claim that I thought would be kind of obviously not true. When I told her the truth about it a few hours later, she didn't believe me, and thought the original lie was true. Oh well.

As I said before, if you lie at work, you are done. That means lying to a co-worker or supervisor, not a criminal.

[Gray222]

Totally agree about forgive and forget concept, and anyone who is married knows how important it is, even if it can be hard to do sometimes. However, when people repeatedly lie about stuff (their backgrounds, for instance) and then lie about other things that are not as bad, it becomes harder to forgive and forget. At what point do you write them off as a liar? In my work, the first time it happens is the last time. Not as cut and dry other places, I suppose.


I concur that in a work place, especially one that requires trust between people for survival, there can be no lies.

[BehindBlueI's]

I concur that in a work place, especially one that requires trust between people for survival, there can be no lies.

Sure. Everyone's in the same page here, it appears.

So what about other mistakes? We're talking about more than lies.

[45dotACP]

Very interesting discussion and one which I can empathize with.

As a nurse, I'll freely admit to having made a mistake before. I gave a patient the wrong dose of a medication once. I knew what happened almost the instant they took the medication and I immediately reported it to my charge nurse and filled out a "Patient safety event".

It stuck with me though. I've never made that mistake again because the worst part of it was looking my patient in they eye. The person for whom I was responsible and I had to tell them that I fucked up. Feeling like someone misplaced their trust in me was and is something that still chaps my ass.

Here's my hospital policy in a nutshell:
There are some mistakes you don't want to make. We call them "red rules" and essentially they refer to incorrectly identifying a patient or surgical site before a surgery. If you fail to do those things, you will be disciplined immediately and without question because you could lead to permanent damage to the wrong site or wrong patient and if you didn't identify a patient before a procedure you might indeed be too dumb to work in a hospital.

When you make a mistake in my hospital, so long as it isn't a "red rule" the goal is not to punish you for your mistake, but rather to see where there might have been a screwup.

The classic example I can think of is when I spoke to a nurse who told me that once IV potassium syringes (stuff used to stop the heart in Lethal Injections) used to be in the same drawers as Saline flushes...used to be the same color and volume syringes too. That changed after a nurse gave a patient a KCL flush and stopped their heart. Here's the thing though...the nurse saw the patient flatline and immediately realized the mistake and called a Code Team, who saved the patient. Rather than trying to crucify the nurse who fucked up, the hospital brass looked at the situation, decided that KCL should be more carefully controlled...the mistake led to an improvement of process that probably prevented more deaths. Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't, but one thing that really factors into how well it goes for you is if there is any evidence that you're lying or trying to cover it up.

Yes, people are becoming more litigious and unfortunately it's becoming an act of courage to say you screwed up to someone but that's what you must do if you're in the business of healing, because admitting you fucked up can be more important than you getting in a little hot water with the bosses.

More than anything, admitting a mistake helps to improve the processes in a hospital. And this is gonna sound scary, but mistakes happen all the time in hospitals. People consider them these hyperorganized places of healing, but in reality they're just a notch or two above loosely organized chaos and are the perfect environment for mistakes to happen, so admitting you made one isn't really a rare thing and it goes one step further to "idiot proofing" processes.

[BehindBlueI's]

Rather than trying to crucify the nurse who fucked up, the hospital brass looked at the situation, decided that KCL should be more carefully controlled...the mistake led to an improvement of process that probably prevented more deaths. Sometimes it does, other times it doesn't, but one thing that really factors into how well it goes for you is if there is any evidence that you're lying or trying to cover it up.

That's a climate that encourages owning the mistake and learning from it.

Here's something I had in mind when I wrote this. I came extremely close to shooting a robbery suspect who pulled a cell phone from his waistband. I didn't. Because of that I didn't have to fear a civil law suit and I could honestly talk with the idiot and the idiot's parents about how close to death/serious injury he came. Had I shot him, the department would have flipped the eff out if I had that sort of conversation because their would have inevitably have been a lawsuit in the pipeline. Who's fault it would have been had I shot him was irrelevant at that point. We could honestly talk about what led up to my near decision, that he was interrupted in a felony, one suspect was visibly armed, they fled and we didn't know which was the one with the gun, his action of flipping over on his back and pulling something from his waistband in a dimly lit area after running from police, my inability to distinguish if it was a weapon or not, my fear for my own safety if I let the suspect get the first shot, etc. I'm forever grateful I didn't break that shot..but how do you "own it" today? ESPECIALLY today with social media and 24 hour news loops endlessly replaying every minute detail, gigantic civil suits, etc?

[Gray222]

Sure. Everyone's in the same page here, it appears.

So what about other mistakes? We're talking about more than lies.

I can only speak about my experiences and how we deal with people who lie constantly or egregiously.

At work we have no such issues. If someone lies about something they are simply reprimanded extensively, especially if it is something important. White lies or the like are disregarded because they are part of life.