The Battle for Good and Evil - Ethics within Communities of Practice
Who gets to choose what is right and wrong within a community of practice, and what if our moral compass steers us astray?
Hi everyone – sorry its been a while since I’ve shared anything, I’ve been really busy - some of which will get shared really soon :)
One of the several exciting things I’ve done recently is I got to take part in the Communities of Practice Summit, hosted by Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner at their social learning lab in Sesimbra Portugal. It was a wonderful experience and I got to learn from and with some really inspiring people, and came away with some amazing new ideas that I can’t wait to have the opportunity to try.
Whilst the whole event was brilliant, there was one session in particular that has had a profound effect on me. We ran a series of series of sessions using the Design Clinic format – a social learning technique introduced to me by Travis Tennessen – starting with a question that begins with the phrase ‘could you help me with….’. Earlier in the summit we had been discussing how communities of practice as a format are agnostic, and as such run the risk of being used for bad as well as good. Off the back of that discussion I volunteered the question ‘could you help me with coming up with strategies that help community leaders navigate the battle between good and evil within their communities?’. Nothing too dramatic obviously, just your run of the mill ethical dilemma.
Those who took part in the exercise did the most amazing job. They came up with some fantastic discussion points, challenges and suggestions, and by the end of it, something exciting had happened to me - I changed my mind.
Its taken me a while to get my thoughts clear on this – its not every day that you’re challenged on fundamental views of right and wrong – but I said that I would take an action from the summit to go home and write down my thoughts and share how I got there.
Ready? Ok, here we go….
Before
I have been of the opinion that we as community leaders should be intolerant of intolerance - that we cannot tolerate those members who hold beliefs that we consider to be bad or evil and remain successful. That it is part of the leader’s role to help sanctify and defend the accepted culture of the community, and protect it from being corrupted by damaging forces. This may sound dramatic, but it really isn’t – imagine you’re are holding a community session and a new member joins, and they spend the following hour talking about how they disagree with women’s right to vote or for agency over their own bodies? What if they begin to be racist or anti-Semitic or Islamophobic? Your role as a leader is to maintain the safety of members of the community, and in my view these intolerant views cannot be tolerated. Your role is to remove those people and views from the community. And as far as I was concerned, this was the right thing to do, and that was a core-fundamental belief on the role of a community leader. We cannot and should not tolerate those who’s beliefs we find intolerable, and its our duty as leaders to remove them.
The Counterpoint
There’s a number of considerations and nuances that this viewpoint consciously (or unconsciously) fails to address. Firstly and most fundamentally is that the concepts of good and bad and right and wrong exist in the eye of the beholder. Just consider the two sides of the argument in the abortion debate in the US – whichever opinion you hold, do you think that those with opposing views think that their viewpoint is wrong or evil? Does either side of the argument feel like they aren’t only fighting for what is right, but against something that is unconscionable? As I don’t know you the reader I wont talk about any political preferences I may or may not hold, but really my views and opinions aren’t relevant – whatever yours are, do we think those with differing political or religious beliefs to our own believe that they are supporting the wrong side of history?
Secondly, by rejecting that which we consider wrong or bad or intolerable, we don’t actually solve the problem. The bad things in this world don’t go away simply because we don’t listen to them – they just go underground and become insular, leading to extremism and entrenched polarised beliefs. Ironically these isolated groups often form strong and thriving communities of practice, as they seek out people who believe the same things they do, act in a way they value, and seek a sense of community with other likeminded individuals. Do the leaders of those communities think they are doing the wrong thing by bringing those people together? Can you imagine a viewpoint where others would think you are doing the wrong thing by bringing YOUR community together? And if you can, does it make you question whether you’re right or wrong? No – of course it doesn’t, because you wouldn’t be doing it and investing the love and energy into it if you thought you were bringing ill to society.
Also worth considering, shunning people into the worst corners of society cuts off a vital path out of those ideologies and beliefs. If all we hear are those echo chamber voices that tell us we are right, how will we ever discover or learn to accept that we might actually be wrong? And if we come to the realisation that just maybe we might be wrong, but our entire support network is tied inextricably to those beliefs that we are now questioning, how much harder is it to choose isolation and exclusion over just following the crowd?
Perhaps as community leaders, in our efforts to protect our communities from that which we consider to be wrong, we are actually having a more damaging impact on both our communities and wider society. Perhaps in our efforts to do so, we are actually imposing our own value frameworks onto others without comprehending that – without voices to the contrary - we may actually be doing harm. Perhaps intentionally not allowing the opportunity for the community to question or be challenged on its values and beliefs, we might actually be harming someone or something by our ignorance.
Now
With this in mind, how are we to defend our community from what we consider to be wrong without imposing our own beliefs of what right and wrong are on the community? And considering what the consequences can be for restricting or removing any dissenting or contrary voices, how do we ensure that we are remaining open-minded towards the prospects of growth, of our own emotional and ethical evolution, and to the concept that once was right may no longer be so?
I need to stress at this point that I am not advocating for the tolerance of the morally and ethically reprehensible. I am not saying you or anyone in your community should be able to do or say what ever they want, and expect to be heard accepted or tolerated for doing so. Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences – we as a community or society cannot function when such destructive and disruptive influences run unchecked or unchallenged. Please do not read this and think that I am advocating for the acceptance of racists, sexists, Nazis, or religious extremists within our communities just in the interests of balance. I am not.
What I am saying is that we shouldn’t immediately exclude people from our communities because they don’t believe the same things we do. By doing so, we hurt ourselves and we hurt others. What I am advocating for is that every community should form its own code of ethics that its members believe in and respect, and be prepared and open to discussing them. When new members join the community they should accept that they are expected to respect those values and ethics in order to remain part of the group.
I am lucky enough to work in software development where beliefs and preferences are ultimately inconsequential in the grand scheme of things – no one is going to die if a software release is delayed - but even here, there are polarising opinions. Agile practitioners will spend days and weeks extolling the virtues of agile methodologies over waterfall methodologies, Test Engineers the respective values of manual and automated tests, Programmers the merits of TDD, BDD or a myriad of other approaches. We can all accept that there are opposing viewpoints, and we can accept that there may be certain circumstances where the opposing position is more appropriate than our own (no one wants an minimum viable MRI scanner). In many cases, its actually beneficial to have a dissenting or different opinion in the room – it helps to keep us honest. Diversity of opinion is essential for growth, but that doesn’t mean every opinion is of the same value to the community and deserves the same airtime. We don’t and shouldn’t tolerate someone who relentlessly disagrees and disrupts the rest of the community because they don’t or wont accept the same values as the rest of the group. We don’t have to agree all the time, but if you can’t accept the values of a community then it just isn’t for you – if you then choose to stay to be disruptive, you are choosing to be disrespectful of the other members and you can’t have any complaints when you are told you are not welcome. As a leader, it is YOUR responsibility in the first instance to help the group define its own value framework, its YOUR responsibility to ensure that the community hears and is open to hearing different opinions and, if agreed by all members, to evolve its values framework in light of new information, and its YOUR responsibility to ensure members respect those values and those that refuse to do understand that it is not acceptable and they can’t be welcome. It is NOT your responsibility to tell the community what is right and what is wrong, and to screen out those topics you consider to be wrong from discussion.
Disclaimer – this is a complicated subject, and whilst I’ve tried my best to be reasoned with what I’m saying. That being said, I’ve changed my opinion on what is a fairly fundamental subject, and I’m open to it evolving if I learn something new. There will be scenarios or arguments that I haven’t yet considered, and they may change my views. I’m open to hearing what those arguments might be, so if you can see something glaring and obvious that I haven’t considered I will do my best to respond to any comments below to talk about them.
Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve enjoyed this post I’d really appreciate it if you could share it - alternatively you could always buy me a coffee :)