The author misses the point. People are avoiding sensitive questions not because it impacts opinion on average, but because of the rare outliers that ruin it for everybody.
It takes just a single asshole reporting you to HR to ruin your life.
It takes just a single asshole reporting you to HR to ruin your life.
The counter-argument is this: do we still overestimate our true risk of ruin when it comes to asking sensitive questions? Are we actually going to get fired (or whatever horrendous thing) for not asking that question? I bet the answer is that we still overrate our true probability of ruin when it comes to these things.
What's worse than being fired is to be stuck on a job where the environment/culture has gone bad. Not everyone has the economic and social mobility to change jobs on the fly.
From the organization's perspective, though, this is a cancerous growth that kills your employees' motivation and innovation and foments a culture of distrust, siloing and paranoia. Too bad there's no easy way to align the incentives there, since the corps are hella scared of being on the wrong side of political winds, too.
There is no rational decision in your brains choice to make you fear public speaking or fear heights. I think avoiding sensitive questions is largely the same thing.
Many people have an irrational fear and their excuse (while semi legitimate) is to try to rationalize the whole thing as you have.
- Do you have any medical conditions / health issues?
- Do you plan on having more children?
- What religion are you?