How often have we heard stories about friends or neighbors (or strangers) who got some sort of preferential treatment from some city official or another? Most of the time the story comes to light if it involves a major scandal - say, a tax assessor accepting a bribe and then lowering someone's property tax assessment - but often it's just a matter of "I have this friend in at L&I who said he can help out."
Bob Stone, a professor at Cal State Long Beach, writes about this in a column for Management Insights. It seems that more often than not, public officials or civil service employees have biases like any other human, and those biases affect their decision making:
Everybody has biases: we love some people, we dislike some, we like some schools, we admire people in some occupations. We recognize these biases.
But we also make assumptions, almost unconsciously, that hijack our impartiality.
The public official, he writes, is expected (and required) to put these biases aside:
Impartial judgment is part of the deal for public servants. Americans count on it. There's no room for bias in tax assessment, zoning decisions, policing, judging, or contract awards.
But, as he says, "many factors conspire to rob us of our chance at true impartiality."
Of course, this doesn't excuse such behavior, but it does remind us that in a city government with over 20,000 human employees, it's going to take a long time and a lot work to make sure they all have the ability to recognizes their biases and the methods to deal with it.
Comments (2)
Sadly our premium failure is , we make assumptions , almost unconsciously , that hijack our impartiality.
Posted by Jasper Zeigler Jr | September 13, 2007 2:32 PM
Thank a lot good post!
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Posted by Fluenulaneors | December 11, 2011 5:06 PM