There is a strange phenomenon that lurks in large organisations and creates a veil of fuzziness for those within it. This veil clouds people’s judgement, their perception of facts and even make them blind to unethical behaviour and worse.
Margaret Heffernan defines this as wilful blindness – evident in situations where people “could have known, and should have known, but chose not to know.” Not out of malice, but from a place of discomfort, fear of conflict or fear of facing our own behaviours.
And that choice not to know is often subconscious to the point where the individual genuinely feels they simply did not know. Often to the incredulous loud chants of ‘how could you not?’ from those on the outside who have witnessed whatever has transpired as a result of the blindness.
We ALL choose not to see things that cause us discomfort or don’t conform to our worldview. Every hour of every day. Sometimes consciously, but more often without conscious thought. We look away from what might challenge us, disturb us, or demand too much. It’s why leadership teams form ‘bubbles’ that protect them from seeing the complete impact of their actions.
Recent horrific scandals such as the Post Office and Dundee University demonstrate wilful blindness in action – where people who perceive themselves to be acting with positive intent and integrity, purposefully act in ways which are demonstrably damaging or negligent.
Wilful blindness is our baked-in propensity to fail to see things which are hiding in plain sight.
Wilful Blindness in HE
In Our Universities and HEIs
Look closely and you will see wilful blindness in your own day-to-day work. Here are a few from my own experience:
- The committee meeting where no one mentioned the risk to students of cutting back on counselling hours. In the context of heightened demand (which isn’t logged in the paper. The cuts materialise, students fail to receive the timely support that they need with sometimes terrible human consequences.
- The business case running into hundreds of thousands nodded through despite the known inability of the department concerned to roll out a project of that scale and complexity. While the student support needs go unfunded.
- A paper to the Board outlining core risks of a new partnership – regulatory, financial, reputation, and no-one probes beyond the highly superficial. Because they don’t want to know. Even though they do. The minutes record rigorous diligence….
Let’s take an example: an academic registrar raises concerns about a restructuring plan that would decimate her team’s capacity to deliver assessment and exams. She writes a paper, flags risks, and makes a clear statement about the impact in committee. No one objects – but no one acts either. The proposal goes through unchanged. Weeks later, the same committee questions why the exams were chaotic, appeals/complaints are through the roof and student requiring specific provisions didn’t have their needs met. No one mentions the paper, and no one recalls the warning. This isn’t malice- in fact, the people around the table will truly believe they are operating with good intent. Rather, it’s wilful blindness at play.
Right now, restructures, resizing, and reviews are being rolled out across the country. The rationale is ostensibly well-intentioned – to ‘streamline’, to ‘modernise’, to ‘align resource with strategy’.
But the delivery and human experience for those in the organisation is markedly different. This lived experience – at the coal face -is generally (purposefully) unseen by those enacting the changes. To see them clearly would cause profound cognitive dissonance. Leaders see themselves as ‘doing the right thing’ and that doesn’t square with the pain of those affected by those decisions.
Beyond the restructuring, there is often an optimistic expectation that all will be well again and that the impact of the cuts will fade. The reality is that organisations are collections of human beings, and the loss of colleagues, the emergence from sustained threat, and the loss of loyalty to their institution are real. Failing to fully see this, failing to plan for it and failing to flag this as a significant organisational risk is dangerously myopic.
Meanwhile, middle – catalyst – leaders who see both the strategic intent and the operational reality are caught in the middle. They spot the cracks first. But often feel least safe to name them. And are generally directly affected by both having to enact changes and having their own roles affected.
In Governing Bodies
HE governors are, by and large, brilliant people. But they are often lay members and volunteers. One step or three removed from the real juce of the organisational culture, the full reality of university life for real folk. As such, they rely on curated briefings, compliance papers, and assurance dashboards.
In governing body meetings, it tends to be the questions that don’t get asked (or probed and followed up) that illustrate wilful blindness. This failure to ask and to probe may be due to:
- Being uncomfortable with the likely answer and not knowing what to do with it
- Hesitation to ask the “daft” question. They are senior people after all, and unused to feeling inexpert. “Someone else would have asked if it were important”
- A preference to defer to the expertise of long-standing executives
- Unconscious filtering out that which doesn’t fit the institutional story
- That most British of characteristics – wanting to be polite and respectful.
Dashboards and KPIs are an excellent way of keeping wilful blindness in the room. While Boards focus on the measurable, less tangible facts can be obscured from view. And since Boards and the exec choose the KPIs, those which lead to uncomfortable questions can be quietly relegated to the appendices. There’s a quiet collusion.
The Institute of Directors’ report on the Post Office suggests the real issue wasn’t malicious intent. It was thoughtful professionals who stopped asking questions, accepted surface-level assurance, and gradually lost touch with reality on the ground.
You can have a ‘fit and proper’ board, you can test the Nolan Principles and you can have compliant governance structures. And still be culturally blind.
Why It Happens
Heffernan points to several drivers of the wilful blindness phenomenon: social cohesion, hierarchy, and cognitive dissonance. Put simply, we don’t want to believe we’re part of a system that might be failing someone. And even if we do believe it, we don’t always feel we have the power to change it.
Add to that the pace of work, the volume of competing priorities, and the deeply ingrained norms of ‘collegiality’, and you have fertile ground for avoidance.
But let’s also name the system design: league tables, REF/TEF/KEF metrics, and the obsession with performance dashboards. These structures can reward the polished surface, not the messy reality. Wilful blindness isn’t just individual. It’s baked into our sector’s incentives and disincentives.
To be clear, wilful blindness does not reflect a lack of care or compassion. In my experience, most HE leaders, at all levels, act from a place of commitment, integrity and good faith. But the structures around them, and the culture we all help to sustain, can make it difficult to truly see and acknowledge the full picture.
Acknowledging this reality – that good people under pressure can systematically avoid difficult truths – is the first step to addressing it.
Ideas To Counter Wilful Blindness
For Exec Teams and Senior Leaders
- Treat silence as an alert, not reassurance
If no one has raised a concern about a major initiative, why? Is it trust? Is it fatigue? Is it that they’ve tried before and it went nowhere? Don’t move with relief to the next agenda item. Time spent exploring the unsaid will deliver significant benefit downstream.
- Make challenge overtly safer
Some institutions are trialling ‘red team’ reviews for big decisions, inviting internal critics to explore flaws before implementation. Others use reverse mentoring or staff panels to hear from less dominant voices. These aren’t silver bullets, but they signal openness – so long as the feedback is acted upon and not dismissed. Especially when it’s hard or counter cultural.
- Support reflective space for middle leaders
Deans, academic registrars, faculty COOs often see the cracks before anyone else. But they’re also stretched and may feel isolated or vulnerable in speaking out during times of financial constraint. Actively providing safe spaces for them to speak up and be heard is vital. Coaching, mentoring, and facilitated peer learning can help them think out loud and build confidence to speak up in tricky circumstances.
- Model curiosity at the top
The tone set by senior leaders is crucial. What happens when someone says, ‘I don’t think this will work’? Are they thanked, or dismissed as naysayers? People observe those consequences and modify their behaviours accordingly. This requires a level of vulnerability on the part of senior leaders couple with low ego. Not always in rich supply.
For Boards and Governance Leads
- Protect and encourage professional dissent
Allow space for uncomfortable truths and support those who voice them. Time is critical here. How often do you hear “in the interests of time, let’s take this as read’? Why on earth do we do that? What is being missed in those cases? - Get closer to the organisation
Enable trustees and governors to talk freely to staff, to walk the campus, and hear from students routinely, not just when things go wrong. Ask the scary questions. - Ask human questions
Not just ‘Is this compliant?’ but ‘What does this feel like on the ground and how do we know?’ ‘Whose voices are we not hearing?’ ‘What are we not asking because it feels awkward?’ ‘Who is this protecting’?
At the governance and executive level, being alive to the fact that discomfort is an important signal is the first step to spotting and resolving blind spots.
This matters
More than ever, large organisations such as HEIs have significant power – for good or ill or anything in between over people’s lives. That responsibility cannot be assumed lightly and the implications for leaders, for actors, for stakeholders are profound.
HEIs are places of curiosity and inquiry. That ethos needs to extend beyond teaching and research into how we make and critique decisions, how we listen, and how we adapt.
Wilful blindness isn’t about ‘bad’ people doing ‘bad’ things. It’s about good people, under pressure, slowly stepping away from difficult questions. Not because they don’t care, but because it’s hard.
That’s precisely why it needs attention. The sector’s current challenges – financial pressure, regulatory scrutiny, and public accountability – make the cost of institutional blind spots higher than ever.
If you’re a leader who’s been sensing something’s not quite right, but haven’t known what to do with that instinct, consider asking yourself:
- What am I choosing not to see – and why?
- What’s the question I am shying away from asking – and why?
- What’s the worst that could happen if I truly opened my eyes?
The answers might be uncomfortable. But less uncomfortable than the consequences of not asking at all.
