Thought Paper on "Blind Spots"

In Bazermen and Tenbrunsel’s “Blind Spots” article bounded awareness describes “our common tendency to exclude relevant information from our decisions by placing arbitrary bounds around our definition of a problem, resulting in a systemic failure to see important information”. These gaps at the individual level were compounded at the organizational level resulting in the Challenger disaster. The Morton Thiokol engineers were constrained in their thinking, missing the connection between low temperatures and O-ring near certain failure. They limited themselves to the data in the room, rather than seeking the best data to answer the question. In this case, despite their expertise, they didn’t even ask the right question: was there ever an O-ring failure at higher temperatures. Asking the right question very likely would have delayed the launch.

It is easy to blame the engineers for poor communication, however, it is clear both the Morton Thiokol managers and NASA officials were aware of the engineers’ information and made the launch decision informed of their recommendation. NASA made a decision under uncertainty responding to stakeholder’s pressure to launch. No astronaut, while astronauts arguably were the biggest stakeholders of all, was involved directly in the launch decision. Thoughts of loss of life were distanced from the pressure of financial and bureaucratic concerns.

Humans are unable to consider all possible actions and consequences of these actions. Our minds quickly succumb to bias, having a strong tendency to seek confirmatory evidence and failing to acknowledge, much less seek non-confirmatory evidence. The gaps exist between “who we believe ourselves to be and who we actually are”. In the case of the Challenger, previous launch successes during which there had been O-ring failure, led to overconfidence. This error in judgment was exacerbated by the human tendency to seek proof the launch would fail (which it never had before, even...