IgnorANCE or ignorING?

I went for a run at lunchtime today. 

And, as is my modus operandi - I was unplugged. No podcast. No playlist. The beauty of being unplugged is that my mind decides what to surface without much thought or consciousness.

And what surfaced was a word.

Or maybe it was two words but still not a whole thought - IgnorANCE. IgnorING. Same root. Very different meaning. And a question that's been popping up in several places around me this week.

So let me take you through four moments that brought it to life.

Moment one: The young person's admission
A young person close to me - someone I love and respect - made a confident claim about themselves in a recent conversation about what character trait within themselves they're most grateful to The Creator for.

They said they had a centred locus of control. That they took ownership of what happened in their life.

We explored it. Gently, then less gently. Because the evidence, when we named it out loud, didn't quite match the claim. Situations where things had gone sideways. Patterns where ownership was conspicuously absent.

Their response, when pressed?

"I was joking. I know it's on me."

And then - the most honest thing they said all evening: "I just haven't done anything about it."

That's not ignorance. They knew. They'd always known. What was missing wasn't information. It was the decision to act on what they already had.

That's ignorING.

Moment two: The organisation
I've been working with a group recently on something deceptively simple: naming the behaviours they expect of each other.

As we worked through it, something emerged. Over time, certain leaders in the organisation had developed habits - patterns of behaviour - that had created a felt sense of unsafety in their teams. People had raised concerns quietly. Some had left entirely.

When I asked the group whether these leaders had ever been told - directly, clearly - about the impact of their behaviour, the room went quiet.

The honest answer was: not really.

And here's where the distinction matters enormously. You cannot hold someone to the ignoring standard if the information was never delivered. If the feedback was never given, the conversation never had, the impact never named - that's a knowledge gap.

That's ignorANCE.

The prescription for ignorance is information. The courage to say: "When you do this, here is what happens."

Without that, others can't choose differently. They don't know what they're choosing to ignore.

But here's where it gets particularly important for anyone in a leadership role: we all have blind spots. That's not a character flaw - it's a human condition. Blind spots, by definition, aren't visible to the person who has them. Which means a leader's ignorance isn't always passive. It can be the direct result of never creating the conditions where people feel safe enough to tell you the truth.

Seeking feedback isn't a sign of weakness. It's the most proactive way to close the gap between what you think is happening and what's actually happening. And if you're in a position of leadership and people aren't telling you hard things - that's not a sign that all's good in the 'hood.

It's a sign that something in the conditions needs to change.

Moment three: The interruption
In the same session, something happened in real time that made the room sit up.

A participant shared that the previous evening, a leader - one of those we'd been discussing anonymously - had walked into a conversation between two team members, offered no acknowledgement of the interruption, and simply made a request of one of them before walking away. 

No apology. No check-in. Just the assumption that the conversation could be displaced because something more pressing had arrived.

I asked: in a world where expected behaviours are clear and everyone is empowered to name poor behaviour when they see it - how would you have handled that?

"It would have been easier," they said. "Right now, I don't feel like I have permission to challenge upward."

This one is layered. The team member may be ignoring - choosing silence because the cost of speaking feels too high. The leader may be genuinely ignorant - unaware of the impact because nobody has yet found the words or the safety to say it. 

What's missing isn't awareness on either side. It's the conditions that make honesty possible.

Permission. Psychological safety. The structural courage to say: "What just happened wasn't okay."

Until those conditions exist, ignoring and ignorance blur into each other. And the organisation pays the price.

Moment four: The fizzy drink
Someone offered me a drink recently - one of those well-known fizzy ones that seem to find their way into every social gathering.

I declined and passed it along.

The person receiving it asked why I wasn't having any.

I explained. Two reasons: it isn't good for me. And the company producing it has been publicly and actively supporting an armed force responsible for targeting civilians - children, schools, hospitals, places of worship. Members of their leadership have had an arrest warrant issued by an international court. So yes - we make choices about which companies we support. This is one of those choices.

They listened. They nodded. They said something I've heard before:

"Here in New Zealand, we're so far away from all of that. We don't really know enough."

My response?

"And that's exactly why I talk about it whenever I can. It's the least I can do. You see, in our faith, we are taught that if you are able to do something about an injustice with your hands, then you should do so. If you're not in a position to take such action, then we are taught to use our mouths and, finally, if even that is not possible, then we should at least have a feeling of aversion and a prayer against it in our hearts."

And now, they know.

The ignorance gap has closed. The information is there.

And so the only question that remains is the one that follows every one of these moments:

What do you choose to do with the knowing?

The uncomfortable thread
Here's what connects all four moments.

Ignorance is a knowledge gap. The prescription is information - delivered with courage, clarity and enough care that it can actually be received.

Ignoring is a choice gap. The prescription is ownership - the decision to act on what you already have.

But here's the part that makes this genuinely uncomfortable - sorry not sorry:

We sometimes manufacture ignorance to protect ourselves from the accountability that knowing would bring. We claim we didn't know - when the truth is we chose not to look. We say nobody told us - when the truth is we never created the conditions where people felt safe enough to try. We point to distance, to complexity, to busyness, to the fact that it's all very far away - when the truth is that knowing would require us to do something. And doing something is harder than not knowing.

This applies at every level. The individual who avoids the feedback conversation. The team member who stays silent rather than challenge upward. The leader who mistakes a quiet room for a happy one. The consumer who chooses not to ask where their money goes.

In each case, the ignorance isn't accidental. It's maintained.

The most convenient kind of ignorance is the kind we cultivate within ourselves.

And the most courageous thing - at the dinner table, in the team meeting, on the sidelines, in the supermarket aisle - is to close the gap deliberately. To seek the information. To create the conditions where others can give it to you. To name the impact. To act on what you already know.

Final thought
So here are the questions worth sitting with this week:

• Where in your life are you genuinely ignorant - and who could give you the information you need, if you were willing to ask?

• Where are you ignoring - and what is the cost of that choice, to you and to the people around you?

• If you're in a leadership role - are you actively creating the conditions where people can tell you hard things? Or are you maintaining a comfortable ignorance by keeping the room quiet?

• And is there anywhere you might be manufacturing ignorance - choosing not to know, because knowing would ask something of you?

Because the gap between ignorance and ignoring is smaller than we'd like to admit.

And once the information arrives - the only question left is what you do with it.

Go on. Take the Next Step.