Awareness Isn't Enough: Managing Blind Spots

Knowing about Your Blind Spots Isn’t Enough

It’s not enough to know about your biases and other blind spots. You have to take steps to manage them. If you don’t, the defaults will take control.

Some blind spots are due to our perspective. None of us can know everything about a situation from every angle. Think of poker players. If a player had complete information about who had which cards, they wouldn’t make any mistakes. As it is, players can see only their own cards and just the ones dealt faceup. Because they are blind to the other hands, they make mistakes.

While we can only guess why other people do what they do in poker or any other situation, our biggest blind spot tends to be knowing our own weaknesses. There’s a famous quote from Richard Feynman: “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”1

We fail to see our own weaknesses for three main reasons.

First, those flaws can be hard for us to detect because they’re part of the way we’re accustomed to thinking, feeling, and acting. Flawed behavior has become ingrained through a long process of habit formation. Those flaws are part of who we are, even if it’s not in line with who we want to be.

Second, seeing our flaws bruises our egos—especially when those flaws are behaviors that are deeply ingrained. They’re different from shortcomings like, say, lacking a technical skill, because they feel like a referendum on the kind of person we think we are. We are territorial about how we see ourselves and tend to dismiss information that challenges our self-image.

Third, we have a limited perspective. It is very hard to understand a system that we are a part of. Just as you look back on your sixteen-year-old self and wonder what you were thinking, your future self will look back on your current self and think the same thing. Your present self is blind to the perspective of your future self.

Perspective and human nature make it hard to see our own flaws, and yet it’s easy to see the flaws in others. We are practically experts about where our colleagues and friends are weak and where they are strong. It’s hard to accept, however, that others might see us just as clearly in kind. When we get feedback about our own weaknesses from the world, it’s a rare opportunity for getting better and getting closer to the kind of people we really want to be. Use these opportunities wisely!