Oops! My Bad!
Why don’t more people admit when they are wrong?
What a great example baseball umpire Jim Joyce set when he admitted, without qualification, that he blew the call that robbed Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga of his perfect game.
He really “stepped up to plate,” if I may use that metaphor. And it set me wondering (although not for very long) why more people don’t just admit it when they are wrong, and apologize without equivocation. But I know the answer.
Despite the accolades showered over Joyce and Galarraga for their respective displays of class, generally speaking, organizations in particular, and society as a whole, are not very forgiving of mistakes. And in today’s increasingly litigious and often vindictive climate, anyone’s admission of fault could lead to disastrous, expensive, and potentially career-ending consequences.
To err may be human, and to forgive divine, but neither are generally accepted policies of most organizations.
I remember the one time I was wrong. (That is to say, I remember at least one time when I was wrong.) It was the summer of 2004, and a key aide to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told me that the Pentagon was about to release classified memos that would show Rumsfeld had approved “waterboarding” as an interrogation technique at Guantánamo. The aide wanted me to know that although the technique was approved, it was never used, and the authority was soon rescinded. It made for a great story that night, except the aide was mistaken. The memos, when released, in fact showed the opposite. Rumsfeld did NOT approve waterboarding. My story, based on a very good source, was flat wrong. The next day I went on the air repeatedly and explained personally that the story was wrong, and why it was wrong. CNN wanted me to out my source, feeling that the person may have lied deliberately to set me up and embarrass the network, and therefore no longer deserved a cloak of anonymity. But I trusted that the source made an “honest mistake,” and felt if you live by the source, you should die by the source. The responsibility was mine, not my source. The important thing wasn’t to spend a lot of time trying to shift the blame. The important thing was to correct the story as soon as possible, with the same prominence the original inaccurate story was given.
(Contrast this, by the way to how CNN handed the “honest mistake” it made in September 11, 2009, when it went to air with unconfirmed reports, and NO source, of a shootout on the Potomac River. In that case, CNN never admitted it blew the call, instead blaming the Coast Guard for conducting an exercise that fooled them into thinking it was the real thing.)
Back then, I had the luxury of being able to admit I was wrong because I had built up a long record of accuracy, and more importantly, I enjoyed the support of bosses who knew I was a good reporter, and who would support my stand-up effort to do the right thing. But I also knew that this had to be the exception not the rule. Like umpire Jim Joyce, if I blew too many calls I would be out of a job.
The reason almost no one admits when they are wrong these days, is that the lawyers, or the bosses, or the persons themselves, believe any admission of fault will be used as a club by opponents who have no interest in fairness or forgiveness, but are seeking only financial or political advantage.
It took Donald Rumsfeld a long time to admit publically he was wrong about how long the Iraq war would last, and how many lives it would cost, and that’s because I’m sure he believed any admission on his part would be seized on and distorted by his many critics.
The fact is, the reason so few people ever admit screwing up, is that we as a society seem to have completely dismissed the idea that anyone can make an “honest mistake.” The Bush administration’s critics like to say President Bush “lied” about WMDs in Iraq. Lying is knowingly telling a falsehood, or allowing a misimpression to stand by deliberately omitting relevant facts. The evidence suggests was the intelligence failure more in the realm of an honest mistake. That doesn’t excuse incompetence, and the false conclusion about WMDs might well have been avoided with better intelligence practices and more rigorous analysis, but it was still a mistaken conclusion that was honestly believed by a lot of decent people of integrity.
Healthy skepticism is one thing, unrelenting cynicism is another. Unless our culture changes from one is predisposed to believe the worst about everyone and everything, then few people will take the high road when they screw up. It’s not just human nature, it’s self-preservation. If I’m wrong about this, I’ll be the first to admit it.
