Last month, the New York Times featured an article about how critical players in the development of early cellphones recognized the driving hazards – but were so fascinated with their mission that they “never paused to wonder about the risks”. (See Driven to Distraction: Promoting the Car Phone, Despite the Risks).

And it was just that fascination that made it hard for them to be objective about the dangers, though 2,600 deaths and 570,000 injury accidents per year result from drivers distracted by cellphones. According to Bob Lucky, an executive director at Bell Labs from 1982-92, "If you're an engineer, you don't want to outlaw the great technology you've been working on. If you're a marketing person, you don't want to outlaw the thing you've been trying to sell. If you're a C.E.O., you don't want to outlaw the thing that's been making a lot of money."

The First Choice: Do You Really Want to Know?

Leaders, you may think your staff will tell you about risks but all too often professionals are cautious about bringing bad news to the top and hyper-sensitive to how you respond. One study of a prolonged and severe service outage at A T & T, showed that followers had tried to inform their leaders of problems, but had been rebuffed as whiners and naysayers. Eventually the followers decided they shouldn’t have to fight their leaders in order to help them – and left the problems fester.

Followers also face the question of whether they want to know. Though Enron’s motto was Ask Why, one ex-trader at Enron said, “If I had questions, I didn’t ask them… because I didn’t want to know the answer.” (See Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. Los Angeles: Magnolia Home Entertainment, 2005.)

How much damage could have been avoided if the makers of cellphones had really wanted to know the dangers and address them? Facing these sorts of challenges head-on is a spur to innovation. When the US passed higher fuel efficiency requirements, Japanese carmakers took those as a mandate and stepped up their research – putting themselves far ahead of US automakers for many years to come.

The Golden Rule: Be Interested

The key to identifying risks early on is to cultivate curiosity. According to one Software Engineering Director, “The golden rule is to be interested.”

For leaders, this means demonstrating to your staff that you really want to know the full truth -- asking questions, rewarding those who come forward, and being candid in your own communication.

For followers, being interested means both thinking things through for yourself and getting creative when you need an executive’s attention. If you come across as whining, you will likely be dismissed as self-serving. But if you convey your commitment to shared goals in an objective way, along with possible solutions, you will be surprised by how often you get a ready audience.

Every industry has risks and complications. Chances are, if you face these head-on you can marshal your team’s creative resources to address the challenges constructively. Imagine if the credit rating agencies had recognized the risks of eroding ratings quality in their quest for market share and had approached each other to formulate a common way of maintaining standards? Then competition might have shifted to other bases, such as responsiveness, documentation of thoroughness, etc.

What risks might you see if you adopted an attitude of "being interested" in your industry?

How might facing those risks head-on spur you and your team to invent new solutions?