388 Global Ethics for Leadership
my wife’s or daughters ears a little bit bizarre, or indeed the ears of the
women of Borneo? It is just a question of frames of reference.
The only check on shifting frames of reference is to be open to input
from outside the corporate or industry frame of reference. This involves
being open to communication and having a capacity to listen to those
with whom you do not necessarily agree—after all they are by definition
probably at least partly outside the corporate or industry frame of refer-
ence. Family members play a very important role in this checking on
outside reality.
29.8 The Dangers of “Group Think” and the Need
for Informed Independent Input
Even when referring to what appears to be someone outside your
own frame of reference, one can be misled by widespread “group think”
or by a tacit agreement by large sections of society to simply assume
that something that is in fact a well-known possibility will not happen.
The Euro crisis is an example of this. It was very well known and dis-
cussed at the time of formation of the Euro that there was an inherent
problem in a monetary union without a fiscal union. I personally was
well aware of this, but in spite of it I confess I was supportive of the
Euro (and indeed at that time of the UK joining the Euro, something
which few people nowadays confess to). Along with many others I
thought that the trade advantages outweighed the risks. This was not an
unknown risk, but just one which a large number of people chose to ig-
nore. Likewise, the fact that an Icelandic volcano could throw enormous
clouds of ash into the sky across large areas of Europe was not unknown
to geologists; it had happened before in historical times. But we all
chose to ignore the risk and therefore did not do tests on what level of
dust was acceptable for modern jet engines. As a result, European air-
space was shut down for days—some at least unnecessarily.