The Hidden Blind Spot: Why We Keep Getting Risk Management Wrong

Tony Ridley, MSc, CSyP, FSyI, SRMCP. Originally published 21 August 2026.

In the modern boardroom, a CFO speaks of Expected Utility, an engineer worries about Common Mode Failure, and the head of HR is preoccupied with perceived fairness. All three call it risk. Few realise they are describing entirely different things.

Most organisations still treat risk as a single, objective number, something to be measured, ranked and reported on one scale. That assumption sits underneath almost every risk register, dashboard and heat map in use today, and it does not hold up. Research by Tony Ridley, building on the work of risk sociologist Ortwin Renn, argues that risk is a social construct: a narrative that shifts depending on who is describing it, and why.

That mismatch is not a minor semantic quibble. When finance, engineering, health, psychology and culture each apply their own definition of risk without recognising the others, organisations build blind spots directly into their governance, often without knowing it. This piece sets out why that mismatch happens, where it comes from across at least seven distinct professional disciplines, and what a genuinely networked organisation needs to do differently before those blind spots turn into failures nobody saw coming.

This is a member article. The full piece is available to members. Become a member to read it in full.