Ep208: Is your professional practice unethical?

Full show notes: safetyontap.com/ep208

Is your professional practice unethical?

Hey, it’s Andrew, and this is Safety on Tap. 

Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome back to all of you wonderful regular listeners.

Let's begin with an agreement, I'd like to agree somethings with you before you keep listening. 

The first is that the work of health and safety is a fundamentally ethical thing, we do what we do because we believe it is what is right.  So the first thing I'd like to agree on is that we can't talk about health and safety without talking about ethics. 

The second, is that we either can't, or shouldn't, call ourselves professionals if we don't understand the fundamentals of what we say and do.  Plenty of people might know the words and activities of health and safety at a surface level, but what separates them from professionals like us is our greater grasp of the fundamental aspects of health and safety and all that entails.  That's the second agreement - to be professional means a greater fundamental grasp of the nature of what we do and why. 

If you don't agree with these, stop listening, there isn't any point because this conversation will be nonsensical to you.  If you do agree, then this might make sense, in which case it also might be helpful to you.  You decide.

Ok, you’re still here, let's proceed. 

Today's guest is Simon Cassin.  Simon has real range - from serving his community as a fire fighter, to lived experience of harm at work, through ongoing study and practice in the arenas of philosophy and health and safety, and importantly how the two interact. 

Here's Simon: