Tag: blindspots

The Black Hole of Blindspots

Part Two: Taken Unawares

Self-identifying With Those We Investigate

 

(c) Ant-o-Rama, 2015: Darth Apple Caught Unawares

“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.”

Sidney J. Harris

In our last segment, we grappled with those elements of blindspots that exceed our grasp of our influence as researchers. We looked at our limits of imagination, perspective-taking, and the obstacle of wish-fulfillment as areas in need of greater self-awareness and pro-active monitoring of tendencies that can undermine our effectiveness as researchers. In part two, we explore the more personal level of coming to terms with our blindspots: What that looks like in the context of “business as usual.”

How can can take our own shortcomings on-board? Where does this help us to raise our game as researchers, both in the conducting of our cases and reporting of our findings? What does it mean to become an expert at our own failings?

That too is a mastery over blindspots. One that saves us from repeating the temptation to go it alone when there’s a collaborator who can lead where we will falter.

Flattering Ourselves

Not everyone swipes their badge and descends into their fortified bunker or a fortress dressing up as avatars for a theoretical confrontation. So how do we make this real? How does this play out on a more personal level? More to the point: How do we assess the probability of these imagined events actually visiting us in the future? Are we privileging our own self-importance? Are we inflating the box office appeal of us starring in our own video game cinema? Virtual reality headset not included!

One of the firsthand experiences we all walk away from is the kind we go to great lengths not to experience again. That sense of dread and avoidance at-all-costs comes from events we consider beyond our control, even our comprehension. We know where to find our personal shutoff valves. We know where to run for safety, to wrestle back control from a daunting adversary, or the chaos that sends us fleeing its crushing, oversized footprints.

But what happens when these grim outcomes are in reach and we’re the last to know? What happens when we’re oblivious to these looming dangers, until the menace is upon us?  Our lack of awareness and preparedness can amplify the pain. There’s no hunkering down or shelter to seek when the moment of dread arrives arm-and-arm with our own ignorance (and search history). There is no transitional period from the blow to the head to crashing said head to the hard, frosty floor.

Coming to Blows With Our Demons

It’s not just cushioning the blow that should concern us. It’s the gnawing realization that the factors leading to this sneak attack were conspiring in broad daylight right under our congested sniffers. We can’t blow the cover of every closed door meeting. The challenge is for our dismay to move beyond our wounded pride to a front row seat of our own gullible, unsuspecting nature. That’s the show worth watching long after the element of surprise recedes. Confronting one’s vulnerabilities benefits us in two ways as researchers:

1.       A wider recognition of our personal blindspots

2.       An enhanced appreciation for the people we investigate

These sobering and ultimately enriching lessons carries us beyond the limitations of our own risk avoidance. It moves us past the shortness of breath and imagination that comes with being spooked. It elevates us beyond our own instincts for self-preservation and summons powers normally associated with superheroes. We can walk through the walls of closed door meetings. We can better handle the aggressive language of the alleged suspects in their defensive crouches. We sidestep the familiarity traps that befall the prisoners of self-imposed comfort zones.

As outsiders, we’re less prone to the rising pressure of maintaining a code of silence. We are not looking the other way but that doesn’t mean we compromise a confidence; not when there may be more to see. As fluency learners, we’re not staked to unassailable positions, sacred cow sources, or the close-ended commitments of sunk costs and confirmation bias. Not having an airtight narrative doesn’t put us on shaky ground. Neither does losing our earlier assumptions when they don’t match the surprising evidence we gather.

Taking One for the Project

(c) Fortune Magazine, 2020

Another burden worth shedding is that successful investigations ride on the shoulders of the investigator. Admissions of fault or confessions to a deeper truth are not tests of our will or diplomacy skills. Many times these breakthroughs are measured as much by the emotional distance the witness or whistleblower opens between themselves and the wrath of the person or group they’re implicating: The further the distance, the more forceful the allegation.

These dynamics don’t play-out on their own. They require the perspective-taking of the investigator to determine the psychological distance between case informants and their respective risk profiles. Has enough time expired to re-approach a long-buried secret? Have the sparring fighters returned to their ringside corners? Enough airing of past differences to have ironed them out?

There are countless back stories that relative newcomers stumble into; unsettled scores cloaked behind the territorial claims of entrenched adversaries. A learner’s mind is an inquiring one outside the safety of established social circles and affirming peer groups. Newcomer over-confidence in one’s abilities to hear and speak like a native? That’s a blindspot unique to investigators.

An ego can be a heavy thing to carry around. Fortunately we only have to carry one of those at a time (being a parent notwithstanding!)  However, you get the unfiltered glimpse of the onlooker when you lower the barricades around the locked-down neighborhoods where your pride is patrolling. The spectator figures who form the optics of how that hot, inflamed blindspot looks to others in the cold light of day.

There’s humility for starters. Is a co-worker fibbing when they over-apologize for coming late to a meeting? Perhaps I too can recollect not sharing a key reason why I was the one late to the last call? Is that target on my back etched in my own handiwork? Did I unwittingly tamper with the holy grail of someone else’s lost horizon? Am I culpable, guilty as charged? Does my own gullible nature testify to my innocence? Can both conclusions be drawn from the conflicting parties impacted by my research?

More Scratches Below the Surface

Besides our clumsy, fragile egos, another obstacle worth kicking out from under us is this notion of control. We leave the stage managing to the attorneys and production crews. But for investigators the action falls into line with two paths to discovery: guided and unguided questions. Guided questions have hard stops, pre-determined assumptions, and a bias towards binary yes/no answers. Unguided questions give the respondent more interpretive leeway. Given enough discretion, they can even reframe the question.

Put another way, guided questions are the ones we want to answer. Unguided are those our targets want to address. Confusing the two and you’re splintering a blindspot through all manner of observing lenses: spyglasses, binoculars, microscopes, drone cams … to name a few. In fact, our guided questions are unmasked invitations to theories and speculations that our targets know to be tenuous, contestable, even flat-out wrong, and insulting. 

Why would the interrogated dignify a misguided question premised on the interrogator’s foregone conclusion?  Another reason to tread lightly through the signals we investigators strike. The imaginations we fire. The burden of those loaded questions we carry. Is the evidence conclusive? Or do the loose-ends stray from our theories of the case?

“The whole truth” is the sworn testimony we commit to upholding in our legal oath as trial witnesses. The more versions to consider, the more pronounced the role of blindspots as the obstruction to this clarified, verifiable and binding view of conflict resolution. We investigators need to address our own culpability as direct participants in the legal processing of justice before we can permeate the blindspots that cloud the periphery of all containable truths.

The Black Hole of Blindspots

Part One:
Primping in Front of Smoke and Mirrors

I am an unreliable witness to my own existence.

― Russell Brand

In our last post we explored our metaphorical nose for sniffing out the evidence that doesn’t quite smell right: Keeping Your Nose Clean: BS Detection in a World of Fake News and Real Threats. Recognizing and acting on the stench of social media infused misinformation is not an elective but a mandatory requirement for maintaining an informed citizenry in a 21st Century Democracy. Fair enough.

But what about when we’re the messengers of our own research? What happens if our own personal biases compromise our findings? What does it matter if we’re connecting events, matching patterns, calling out questionable behaviors, and assessing the exposure of search targets in our case outcomes? Why show at the presentation if our research methods are not beyond reproach?

In this dispatch we reflect on fine-tuning the information filters that pass through all of us and onto those around us. These are the signals picked up through our words and actions that undermine our ability to investigate and compromise the success of our investigations.

In Part One, we’ll get acquainted with the blindspots — the self-defeating intuitions buried right under our noses (and our stars).  I believe that researchers and consultants have a special relationship with blindspots. It’s us agents of knowledge who need to test the limits of our own self-awareness. It’s at the root of our reputations and effectiveness. Only through a growing and continual pulse-taking of our unintended selves can we see our investigations through to the promise of resolution, justice, and a greater understanding of past events by the future histories we’re called on to inform.

On the Merits

Professions all have rites of passage. From passing the bar, to the CPA exam, to the laminated medical license in the exam room, there are a myriad of milestones and certifications to validate the quality of service delivered by a certified professional. There is no such credentialing for professional investigators. Our work must stand in place of any formal degree or accreditation process. It must stand on its own merits:

        • Doubt on the investigation’s sources and methods
        • Suspicion on the investigator’s motives for conducting it

There is one self-imposed quality check at the disposal of the investigator. The probing for one’s reflexive judgments or blindspots is the researcher’s equivalent to “Doctor, heal thyself.” More than one’s personal loyalties or internal biases, blindspots are the shadow elements that cast…

It’s not a passing coincidence that these two criteria are non-negotiable. They are the deal-breakers for producing credible recommendations drawn from sound research: The two gold standards from which hinge the independent judgment of the investigator.

Can You Look Bad Breath in the Face?

We are rarely the first to notice our own unadorned scents and odors. All but the closest friends and family are loath to let us in on this most universal of blindspots.  This private humbling packs some additional positive takeaways besides the need for breath mints. That’s when we exercise our sniffers as a form of entertainment.

There’s nothing escapist or recreational about getting closer to our own blindspots. Yet removing our own self-serving natures is essential for confronting our own limitations in:

A. Imagination: What’s being talked about in the discussions I’m excluded from? What’s my capacity to write a gossip column: (1) about me, and (2) without access to primary sources?

B. Perspective-taking: How am I being engaged in ways that bring optimal benefit to the other parties? Am I an emissary, broker, pawn, or stooge?

C. Wish-fulfillment: Where am I missing the subtext or nonverbal signals that deny or pushback on what I believe to be reasonable, deserved, or warranted? Can I remove my sense of how things should go from how they actually went?

All three play starring roles in the writing and production of plot twists we never see coming but the audience can sense from a mile away. Call it an overestimation of our talents. Overconfidence in our powers to influence. A tendency to get in our own way — even when walking a straight line. There’s no warm welcomes, smooth landings, or YouTube replays.

How else to explain our insatiable appetite for non-fictional crime stories? Do we believe the characters? Does it seem more or less likely that the well-reported narrative actually went down in the manner depicted in the Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon series? More times than not, it comes down to the frailties — to that realm of human weakness also known as a surplus of pride, a lack of self-awareness, and the shock ending that leads to the tragic fall of our antagonist. Why? A black hole of blindspots, that’s why.

There is, however, a deeper appreciation for the humility needed to endure and learn from the muted glare of blindspots. That living classroom lesson is easily transported to our role as researchers — a role that calls out for self-control, attentive listening, and not playing a starring role in our own insular narratives. These aren’t just codes of conduct and decorum. They are the very ambitions for truly excellent investigators to build on.

(Keep on Playing Those) War Games

While many of our own biases are exposed in our politics and expressed behaviors, blindspots land below the surface. They are the unknown-knowns. Their arrival time is also unknown and their blindsided landing zone is of little solace to the methodical and well-prepped. Well-resourced organizations have as much to protect as they have to imagine about the agents of surprise and disruption.

Some dedicate entire control centers and war rooms just to role play emergency attacks or adverse events that could expose a closely-held secret or compromise a key competitive advantage. These simulations are run in the name of risk management. Really what the participants are trying to do is anticipate the improbable harm that comes to organizations without the capacity to imagine these catastrophic off-the-radar scenarios.

Most war room maneuvers never live out beyond the darkest fantasies of their executioners. A few become false alarms. Some are legitimate enough to impose new fire drills or precautions needed to keep a lid on the potential dangers. All of them change the thinking of the risk professionals, competitive intelligence managers, and top executives who run through these paces. They improve their perspective-taking.

These exercises force them to look at the world from the outside and contentious views of those with much to gain from disrupting that world. We might not be stirred by the altruistic path of empathy when walking in the shoes of an enemy or adversary. But it is a critical to our own safety and preservation in conflicting, often hostile conditions that we can see them as an us. When we objectify our own positions we can better understand, relate to, and ultimately address those who wake each morning with the incentive to find and exploit our blindspots.

In our next installment, we’ll explore the more personal level of coming to terms with our blindspots: What that looks like in the context of “business as usual.” How we can take our own shortcomings on-board in order to raise our game as researchers. In our cases, this means…

          • Speaking with greater presence about events we didn’t attend,
          • Delegating to collaborators whose strengths include sparing us the investigative roles we’re not best suited to perform, and
          • Developing empathy for persons of interest who we may share little more than a unique assortment of blindspots.