This explored the role of humility in adopting error management principles among auditors. This is a pretty dense paper with 3 study protocols, so I’ve had to skip significant portions of the paper.
Two key error management principles were covered: EMO (error management orientation) and EPO (error prevention orientation). EMO is a positive attitude towards errors and functional coping strategies. EMO sees errors (you can also read this as performance variability) as inevitable, potentially negative but also possibly positive. It’s said that people with an EMO orientation see error more constructively as opportunities to learn from. EPO sees error as more negative – things to be prevented and avoided with a more zero tolerance view.
EPO orientations may appraise error with more strain and frustration and “tend to deny or hide them when they occur” (p463). EMO is said to be more beneficial than EPO because it facilitates more long-term effects on learning, innovation and performance.
EPO and EMO contain different facets. EMO is said to have: error anticipation, error communication, error competence, error learning, thinking about errors and error risk-taking (the paper explains each of these concepts, which I’ve skipped).
EPO has two: error strain (a generalised fear or frustration of committing errors and negative emotional reactions) and covering up errors.
EMO & EPO make up the error orientation construct and are negatively related dimensions.
Previous research found that environmental cues including organisational cultures and leadership influence individuals’ error orientations. One study found that “audit team leaders who model their own fallibility have team members who exhibit more error communication and thinking about errors” (p463); this may lead to individuals adopting an EMO orientation via a socialisation effect and thus an “error management culture” (p463) in audit firms.
Self-efficacy has been identified as a key component in error orientation (particularly EMO), such that it provides a sense of personal competence to effectively deal with stressful situations.
Error management orientation may also influence and be influenced by training modalities. It’s said that learning from errors requires greater cognitive resources, which may explain why people with higher cognitive ability respond so well to error management training based on the research cited.
Finally, the role of humility. Humility is “a manifested willingness to view oneself accurately, a displayed appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions, and teachability” (p462). It’s reasoned that higher humility will be positively related to EMO orientation and have interactions with self-efficacy.
Results
Study 1:
This used interview data with 38 auditors to reveal the role of humility in adopting an EMO. They found that “Humble auditors in the field shared a manifested willingness to view oneself accurately” (p466).
Humble auditors were more likely to seek feedback and make their own limitations transparent. Auditors with more willingness to see themselves accurately also took feedback differently to those who didn’t: the former when receiving critical feedback remained calmer, listened to the feedback and sought to understand what they could change. The latter auditors who were seen to have lower willingness to see themselves accurately “were quick to make “excuses” for why something went wrong, often in the form of explaining that certain issues were out of their control for adequate error risk-taking” (e.g. self-serving bias / fundamental attribution bias).
Auditors with higher humility also displayed more appreciation of others’ strengths and contributions, said to reflect the “tendency of humble people to be “other-enhancing rather than self-enhancing” (p468). Humility is said to increase the valuation of others but not at the expense of self-humility.
Auditors perceived with higher humility also represented more of the teachability characteristic, with a receptiveness to receive feedback from others and willingness to ask for help. Higher humility meant auditors could more eagerly receive critical feedback related to performance rather than shy away.
Regarding auditing material errors (where the error has a significant effect on the audit itself and the resulting audit opinion), people with higher self-efficacy reacted more calmly to identified material errors. Auditors with lower perceived self-efficacy seemed to be more rattled by material errors; this was, as expected, also evident with experience, where more experienced auditors were calmer.
However, self-efficacy was also seen as a double-edged sword. It can help facilitate discussion of critical feedback and error, but too much and it may result in hubris and overconfidence.
The authors explain that humility is different from modesty, low self-esteem and learning-goal orientation (which I’ve not covered here).
Study 2:
This used a questionnaire among 220 junior auditors. As per study 1, humility was positively associated with people adopting an EMO. Moreover, humility predicts EMO over and above self-efficacy, highlighting its own separate effect not connected to self-efficacy.
Unexpectedly, humility in this study was positively related to error strain. Humility was expected to reduce error strain because, in theory, should allow an individual a higher awareness of their own limitations, making those errors more foreseeable and reducing strain. They hypothesise why this result was observed, with one idea that perhaps having a greater awareness of internal limitations and therefore relating more performance to those limitations may increase strain.
Study 3:
This used an international sample of 278 more experienced auditors. As per study 2, significant relationships were found between humility and error learning, error communication and error risk-taking.
However, other differences between studies 2 and 3 were found around self-efficacy, error anticipation and error strain; likely to be a result of the different context, sample etc.
They say that despite the importance of self-efficacy, these results highlight that its impact on error orientation may be less than previously thought, with humility being an overlooked component.
In discussing the findings, it’s said these results have broad implications for organisations. One element is for training: participants with lower humility may require different modalities to be effective, as they may be relatively threatened by the prospect of errors.
Another element is around leadership. One study found that team leaders who model their own fallibility have an effect on the error orientation of their team members. It also connects with other research streams of humble leaders or humble inquiry (e.g. Schein et al.).
They then provide some brief ideas around increasing humility. One is to seek feedback that is verifiable (if an objective standard exists), predictable (regular intervals), and controllable (if it is requested). It’s said that feedback that is verifiable, predictable and controllable “is less likely to cross the sensitive line—that is, “the point at which individuals become defensive or protective when encountering information about themselves that is inconsistent with their self-concept or when encountering pressure to alter their behavior” (p478).
Another idea is around self-disclosure, which is the practice of engaging with other people on issues that seem ambiguous or unknown; including things related to their self. This could include making a habit of asking a colleague on issues that are ambiguous, or asking others “What do other people know about me that I might not realize?” (p478) and other blind spots. In fostering this environment and with support of leaders, it’s said to have cross-over with psychological safety.
Finally, this research may help to “overcome some misconceptions about humility in professional practice” (p479). They say there is a habit in media of describing some people as insecure overachievers, which the authors speculate could be the result of interpreting people with higher humility as insecure. It’s said that high humility can result in higher self-deprecation over self-enhancing; that is, “humility usually takes the form of lowering rather than lifting one’s evaluation of the self” (p479) in becoming better calibrated.
In contrast, it’s said that lowering self-evaluations might not be due to insecurity but “rather due to the willingness to view oneself accurately, which is characteristic of humility” (p479).
Authors: Christoph Seckler, Sebastian Fischer and Kathrin Rosing, 2021, Academy of Management Discoveries Vol. 7, No. 4.
Study link: https://doi.org/10.5465/amd.2019.0172
Link to the LinkedIn article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/who-adopts-error-management-orientation-discovering-ben-hutchinson
SafetyInsights.org 