I was chatting to a HR Manager from a financial services firm this week and he told me this story about a workshop a management ethicist ran for their leaders. Over a week the ethicist collected stories from staff about how work gets done. Her aim was to create a convincing scenario that would be used in the workshop. During the workshop she read out the scenario and asked the participants to raise their hand when their gut instincts suggested there was something not quite right going on.

I would imagine everyone would be keeping an eye on one another to see who would break first. Public recognition of something going wrong is an important aspect of the exercise because that’s what it takes for someone to metaphorically raise their hand when they think there is a problem. Peer pressure is involved.

The discussion that followed was rich and intense. Exactly the sort of thing people need in any organisation. Builds intuition, or as blokes like to call it, gut instinct.