The Titan disaster raises uncomfortable questions about leadership, risk and what happens when confidence carries more weight than evidence. For anyone responsible for other people’s safety, the lessons reach well beyond the ocean.

In Episode 12 of The Real Risk, Safety Jon explores Titan through a leadership lens. The focus is on the decisions made at the surface, where priorities are set, concerns are heard or dismissed, and someone decides whether the evidence justifies pressing ahead.

Innovation requires challenging assumptions, but that includes challenging your own. Calling yourself a disruptor does not make physics a stakeholder you can manage with a convincing PowerPoint.

This episode examines questions every leader should be prepared to answer:

• Can people challenge your decisions without paying a personal price?
• How do you distinguish demonstrated safety from confidence that something will work?
• Are previous successful outcomes being treated as proof that the risks are controlled?
• What evidence would make you stop, reconsider or seek independent scrutiny?
• Who has the authority to say “no”, and will that decision actually hold?

Whether you lead a transport operation, a manufacturing business or a small team, these questions belong in everyday decision-making. The real test of leadership is how you respond when the evidence threatens the plan you want to pursue.

Hosted by Jon Hillis, Certified OHS Professional and former WorkSafe Victoria inspector.

“So far as is reasonably practicable.” Seven words that carry a lot of weight when you’re responsible for keeping people safe.

How much is enough? Where does cost fit? And how do you distinguish a defensible safety decision from a shortcut dressed up as a risk assessment?

In this episode of The Real Risk, Jon Hillis takes a practical look at SFARP and the decisions behind managing workplace risk. Drawing on his background as a former WorkSafe Victoria inspector and safety professional, Jon brings the discussion back to the job: what can hurt someone, what you know about it, and what can reasonably be done to prevent it.

Because “we’ve always done it this way” isn’t much of a control measure. It’s just a very well-rehearsed sentence.

This episode’s central questions:

• How likely is the risk, and how serious could the harm be?
• What do you know, or reasonably ought to know, about the hazard and available controls?
• Are suitable controls available and practical for the work?
• Where does cost belong in the decision?
• What evidence supports the controls you selected?

For business owners, officers, supervisors and safety professionals who need to make sound decisions without disappearing into a mountain of paperwork.

Your challenge this week: pick one high-risk task. Ask what could cause serious harm, what prevents it, and who has checked that those controls actually work.

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On 16 Jan 03, a piece of insulating foam struck the left wing of Space Shuttle Columbia during launch. On 01 Feb 03, Columbia broke apart during re-entry, killing all seven crew members.

The foam strike was not simply an unforeseen technical failure. Foam shedding had occurred on previous missions, and because those missions had returned safely, the abnormal gradually became accepted. Previous success began to function as evidence that the risk was tolerable.

In Episode 10 of Safety Jon: The Real Risk Podcast, Jon Hillis examines the Columbia disaster through the lens of normalisation of deviance and organisational risk management.

The episode looks at how repeated deviations can become accepted practice, how confirmation bias affects decision-making, why uncertainty can be interpreted in favour of continuing operations, how technical concerns can fail to reach decision-makers with sufficient force, and what happens when the burden shifts to engineers to prove something is unsafe rather than requiring decision-makers to establish that it is safe.

Columbia is an extreme example, but the organisational mechanisms are familiar. A damaged guard that has “always been like that”, a vehicle defect repeatedly deferred, a procedure routinely bypassed, or a control that fails without consequence can all become normal because nothing happened last time.

That is the trap. An absence of consequences is not evidence that a control is adequate.

Safety Jon: The Real Risk Podcast looks past paperwork, slogans and polished dashboards to examine what actually controls risk, and what happens when organisations convince themselves that abnormal conditions are normal.

For more Safety Jon content, articles, resources and practical WHS tools, visit Safety Jon.