What is Hanlon’s razor?
There is an old saying commonly known as Hanlon’s razor:
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
It is a useful principle to keep in mind.
It is very easy to jump to conclusions about people and their motives. I am always conscious that people can do things without fully understanding what they are doing, or the consequences that follow.
For that reason, I do not automatically assume that someone has acted deliberately or maliciously.
Sometimes people just get it wrong. As everyone knows, it happens to the best of us.
Let’s look at some examples
There are some things which could genuinely be innocent mistakes.
For example:
- Being incompetent without realising it
- Making an error of judgement
- Misunderstanding a process or requirement
- Overestimating your own ability
None of those things are ideal, but they are at least capable of innocent explanation.
Then there are other things which become far more difficult to defend.
For example:
- Pretending to be someone else in order to hide being bankrupt
- Pretending to have a degree
- Pretending to be a chartered professional when you are not
- Inventing qualifications
- Producing a fake certificate
- Editing an expert’s report without their knowledge
- Falsifying important legal documents
- Deliberately misleading a tribunal
- Pretending to be ill in order to avoid being cross-examined in court
- Inappropriate and unwanted sexual contact during inspections
It’s very difficult to explain behaviour like that away as simple incompetence or misunderstanding. A common excuse seems to be an “admin glitch” or similar.
Final thoughts
The purpose of this blog is not simply to pick fights with people.
I want this to function as something of an open diary. A place to record thoughts and observations as these things happen. It’s an aide-mémoire of sorts.
There are serious issues within our industry, and those issues should be the focus.
There is also a huge amount that I still want to write about. Posting once a week makes that difficult, but I am hoping to get most of it written up by Christmas.
We shall see!