My wife works for UCLA where there is a program called Operation Mend (http://operationmend.ucla.edu/). The university, in partnership with the military, is providing plastic surgery to soldiers badly injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is also pairing them and their families with a local “buddy family” in Los Angeles to provide companionship and support for the soldier and his or her family when they are here for care.
A month or so ago, she signed us up to be a buddy family. Last Sunday we met the wounded warrior and his wife, and we have spent much time with them over the last week.
What has surprised me most thus far is how easily our children took to our new friends. Despite the burns that cover his face and cost him an ear and an eye, despite this week’s surgical dressing that gave him an odd, Dali-esque moustache made out of bandages, the kids did not miss a beat, treating him like every other adult who walks into our door.
They trust that if we welcome someone into our house, then that person must be okay. Even outside of our home, when there are plenty of stares, the kids don’t notice or distance themselves. They talk and play with him as naturally as they do with us, perhaps more so.
As I thought about our experience over the last eight days, it struck me that, when we talk about doing the right thing, it can take many forms. One is the more affirmative, brave decision -- the one that my wife made -- to consciously do the right thing and sign us up to be a buddy family. The second is the easier decision that I made, to support her decision and be a part of Operation Mend.
The third is my children’s decision to accept that, like so many other times in a child's life, they had no choice. They did not resist and even capitalized on the situation: They quickly discovered that our new soldier friend was far more willing than we are to play them in Guitar Hero.
Ironically, the decision that my children made so willingly may be the hardest one for most adults: to trust someone else’s decision, accept it with an open mind, and incorporate it into your life.
As adults we second guess what others have done. We question their motives. We ascribe negative intentions when none exist.
You can see it every time a new hire enters a department. Some of the existing staff opens their arms, trusting the person was hired for good reasons. Many, though, hold back, forcing the person to prove herself, or show he wasn’t hired just because he had connections.
It is the same with every policy a company announces. Some employees accept it; others wonder whose butt the company is trying to cover.
Overcoming that cynicism may be the hardest thing that we in compliance and ethics are asked to do.
While we tend to think of the human mind as a funnel, with a wide top collecting facts, and with conclusions flowing out the bottom based on those facts, research shows that the opposite is often true. Once we make up our minds the funnel reverses. Only the facts that agree with our beliefs get through the narrow end, while those that refute it roll off the sides.
In his highly insightful book Why People Believe Weird Things Michael Shermer describes this confirmation bias and points out the human “...tendency to seek or interpret evidence favorable to existing belief, and to ignore or reinterpret evidence unfavorable to already existing beliefs.” Worse, people even forget evidence that refutes their beliefs.
Herein may lie a problem at the root of compliance programs: we assume that if we teach people what the right thing to do is, they will do it. In fact, if they have already decided what the right thing is, or if they have decided the company doesn’t really mean any of this stuff, then the battle is an uphill one. We essentially have to force the funnel to reverse directions again.
That’s a much harder task. It takes much more work, time and money to change a mind than it does to teach someone something new. It takes data that is hard to refute, and it takes persistence. It also takes a willingness to accept that not everyone can be convinced.
Finally, it requires that we recognize that we may need to redirect our thinking away from teaching people to do the right thing, and instead focus on teaching them that we really are serious about compliance and ethics.
A few weeks from now the soldier will return to Los Angeles to visit the surgeon and decide if he wants to undergo what will be his 32nd operation since the car bomb exploded in Kabul.
He’ll be brining his daughters with him on this visit. My children will gain two new friends, and two girls will be reassured that their father, despite that all that has happened to him, is a welcomed member of the world. And again I will be reminded that doing the right thing is easier if, like my kids, you keep an open mind with the wide part of the funnel facing up.