Black, White and Grey

There are very few things that are binary. You can’t reduce all things to black/white, yes/no, all/nothing.

There is a vast gradient of shades between true black (#000000) and true white (#FFFFFF).

Two thoughts:

1) A reduction to black and white can be counter-productive, unhelpful and limiting.

• We shouldn’t always try to dumb things down.

• Things are complex.

• Work with it. (Deal with it.)

2) For much of what we do, we actually operate in the “mostly black” or “mostly white” spaces.

• Whilst we don’t have to deal in binary, we can recognise that at times it is helpful to provide broad brush rules and guidelines.

The challenge is knowing when these broad brush rules and guidelines are unhelpful: when “mostly black” or “mostly white” clearly shifts to “mostly grey”.

For very new practitioners in a field, it is useful to teach, and to have them practice and work in, the mostly black or mostly white parts of the spectrum.

Only when practitioners have a solid grasp of the boundaries of their skills/knowledge/expertise will they be able to explore and operate safely in “grey” territory.