Please State The Obvious

I'll be the first to admit that I'm prone to stating the obvious. Sometimes I apologize for it and sometimes I don't. Many times I don't even realize I've done it until thinking back on a comment later. Most of us have been told all of our lives that it's pretty poor form to speak the obvious. My goal is simply to stop apologizing for it. Here's why...

Some of you may have seen the recent article about the woman in Seattle who used a city car, on city time, to drive to a casino - yes, indeed - en route to an ethics training program. It's pretty easy to laugh (or, perhaps, cry) and simply file this under "Bad idea - DUH!" since no one would ever presumably think about doing such a thing. The fact is, though, that she did. Here's the other fact; the papers are filled daily with reports of folks who have engaged in extremely serious ethical and legal lapses that are every bit as obviously inappropriate to anyone with even half a brain. Most of them, however, actually have a fully-functioning brain and yet they do these things anyhow.

So what's my point here... If your training or your supervision or your counseling don't allow plenty of opportunity to state the obvious for folks - to remind them of things they admittedly probably ought to already know - you are missing opportunity after opportunity to drive home the full range of considerations employees need to be making about their behavioral choices all day, every day. Don't talk down to them - that's simply rude. Rather, in the same tone as you review the rationale for more complex ethical and legal guidelines and mandates, spend some time on what you believe to be the obvious stuff as well. You might well be doing far more good than you imagine.

So, is what I'm saying here pretty obvious? Maybe so. But I'm going to do my best not to apologize for it.