A Victoria Police joke: 'Why do police show their badges when they walk into a police station? So they don't get treated like everyone else.' Many a true word said in jest.
Having worked in closed organisational systems like Victoria Police and various government departments, I have often reflected on how and at what point organisations and their employees become comfortable with the belief that their ideas and attitudes are better informed than those of the general populous — and that their survival is more important.
Once comfortable with that idea — what's next?
A very stark example of this are the recent court decisions relating to the Hillsborough Stadium disaster in 1989, where 96 people were killed.
The Liverpool Football club song assures its supporters they'll 'never walk alone' though their 'dreams be tossed and blown'.
The South Yorkshire Police motto is Justice with Courage.
After the Hillsborough disaster members of the South Yorkshire Police — some very senior — decided that blaming the victims and Liverpool football fans for the disaster and deaths, and harassing their families to secure their own personal and organisational safety, was the preferred path to take.
For 27 long years the parents, brothers and sisters of the deceased victims, the blameless, were forced to walk alone, and be subjected to attacks and harassment from the police, who actually were to blame, and who were employed to protect those who were fatally injured.
"Many such organisations pride themselves on what they see as their specific knowledge. They function with an unquestioning view of the world, holding their own truths to be self-evident."
More recently, in Australia, the Royal Commission into Family Violence and the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse have asked of us as individuals and members of certain groups and organisations to try to understand how it is that we seemingly comfortably turn away from those in need of our help and protection.
A theory of group dynamics holds that all groups are formed for a stated and agreed primary purpose, to achieve a certain goal; but that it is not too long before the unstated purpose becomes the protection of the group itself, and the accepted behaviours within the group become those that ensure its survival.
It partly explains the disturbing situation where organisations such as police, religious groups, churches, schools and government departments who call into question the behaviour of others, demonstrate so little ability to critically reflect on their own motives and actions.
Many such closed organisations and environments pride themselves on what they see as their specific knowledge, being in control of their brief, and all singing from the same hymnal. They function with an unquestioning view of the world, holding their own truths to be self-evident. Expressing doubt is akin to treason, and whistleblower deterrence more often than not resembles communist re-education camps.
It was only a decade and a half ago that I asked a very senior policeman what the options were in dealing with a suspected outbreak of family violence involving a friend of mine. 'I just hope she's got a couple of big strong brothers,' I was told. 'That's the only way to sort that out. Bloody women always withdraw their complaint after a few days — all that paperwork done for nothing.'
There was a frightening certainty around such a shallow and ill-considered response. It asked no questions, sought no answers, entertained no doubt, its only informant being narrow and limited policing experience.
In life we often place greater value on certainty than uncertainty. Uncertainty dwells in unchartered terrain with little comfort to be found anywhere. Certainty, however, is that oh so comfortable place where we are right.
It seems to me that when we know we are right, our horizons are limited, and there is little opportunity to grow individually or organisationally. It is in times of uncertainty and doubt that we are presented with the opportunity to question, to learn and to grow.
Learning how to unlearn that which makes us certain and then leave that space open for enquiry, uncertainty and both personal and organisational growth may be the beginning of the path that leads us away from turning away.
Paul Coghlan is a writer, a recovering Victorian Public Servant and author of When You Stop Laughing Go Home: Impressions of a Young Nation — Timor Leste 2010-2013.