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Comment by Stratoscope | Hacker News Reader

This was the interesting part for me:

> When asked what went wrong, he simply replied, “As you Americans say … I f--ked up.”

> Captain Asoh’s frankness and self deprecation helped him preserve his career. Rather than get fired, as was expected, the airline merely demoted him to copilot, before allowing him to work his way back up to captain a few years later. He went on to captain hundreds more flights, all of which landed successfully.

> The “I f--ked up” reasoning, or what became more eloquently known in legal circles as “The Asoh Defense” is used to prove that sometimes a frank admission of guilt is the easiest way out of a pickle.

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I wish more people knew this… it actually works amazing. Taking responsibility for your mistakes and, better yet, explaining exactly what went wrong and how you will prevent it in the future almost always turns out better, and builds more respect and trust than trying to deny or shift the blame as is usually done. Learning this radically improved my career progression, and personal relationships. It also takes the power away from people that would use it to manipulate or control you.

It's important to note what you're describing is taking real ownership of your screw ups. Like you said, that means doing what you can fix them and prevent them from happening again. Simply saying 'that's on me' and doing nothing to change isn't what's meant here.

And yes, I have done this my whole career and it works.

Good point- I often see, especially in corporate press releases about security incidents, etc. an apology (often without even directly saying they are responsible- or with a company but no actual individual people taking responsibility), but then no explanation of what they are actually changing to fix the problem. Or there will be a “designated fall guy” who was not personally involved but is apparently paid with a prearranged “golden parachute” to resign and take the blame, which is just a deflection strategy to avoid actually taking responsibility while appearing to do so.

It also depends on the severity of the consequences of the error. If people had died or been seriously injured in that water landing, I don't think Asoh's "I fucked up" acknowledgement/apology would have saved him from getting fired, or at the very least getting the same demotion, but with a longer and more difficult road to reattaining his Captain title.

That works for American aviation because there's a strong culture of avoiding blame. Instead of taking punitive action the usual course is to look for a root cause and how to avoid it. That extends as far as drug/alcohol use where if you miss a flight because you've checked yourself into whatever program you're pretty much guaranteed to keep your job. Show up drunk though and you'll find yourself in jail.

There's an interesting discussion on an aviation forum about landing in an unapproved situation. The question was whether the response should be termination or training. Lots of folks weighed in, favoring termination. However lots of those same folks pointed out that their employers had a no-fault go around policy — as in you probably wouldn't even have to fill out paperwork for aborting a landing. Own up to whatever mistakes, go around, and land safely – nobody cares. Double down on unsafe behavior, nobody's going to want to fly with you.

Such a culture is nearly essential to actually do real high stakes things- there is really no other way to operate in any field where the consequences of failure are immediate death, which isn’t limited to aviation. Only in fields where the people have no real skin in the game do people get away with not taking personal responsibility.

Reminds me of a case in healthcare, where a hospital found genuine apologies were way more effective than stonewalling to try and avoid liability.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/saying-sorry-pays...

> When a treatment goes wrong at a U.S. hospital, fear of a lawsuit usually means “never daring to say you’re sorry.”

> That’s not the way it works at the University of Michigan Health System, where lawyers and doctors say admitting mistakes up front and offering compensation before being sued have brought about remarkable savings in money, time and feelings.

Joel Spolsky wrote about this roughly 20 years ago on JoelOnSoftware. IIRC, he hired a locksmith to copy a key and the key didn't work. After the third (and likely final, because of how irritated he was getting) try going back to the shop, the locksmith took a closer look at it and said, "I'm sorry, I see where I went wrong." Instantly, situation defused from major annoyance to "OK, this guy just made a mistake, I'll try it again."

The problem in the US: Accepting guilt may open you to gross negligence with can incur triple damages. As a result most bog standard legal advice in US tells companies to never admit fault when sued. It would be nice to carve out some kind of exception a genuine apology.

But they have to be genuine, not "We found the button to press to get the best result."

Plenty of people can fake genuineness. It doesn't have to be genuine to be effective, it just has to be well received.

In many Islamic justice systems, there is an option for the offender to pay money to the victim to reduce penalty. I think there are many cases where this could work in a non-Islamic culture, but many people are afraid that "rich people can buy their way out of trouble". There is some truth to it, but the victim may feel the outcome is better after payment.

Once a sufficient number of people have peed in the pool the strategy fails to work: this physician is incompetent and dug in, that physician is incompetent and dug in, another physician who is incompetent and refuses to own up, and here's one who is incompetent and pretends to be sorry.

This book - https://www.amazon.com/Sorry-Case-Good-Apologies/dp/19821634... - has an entire chapter dedicated to this.

There was also a Radiolab episode that discussed this idea at a different hospital...

https://radiolab.org/podcast/apologetical-2303

Hmm yeah but the US legal system is kinda out of control with ridiculous claims and damages granted. If you're going to bankrupt a doctor, it becomes much harder for them to tell the truth.

Can you substantiate this claim?

Pro tip, I've gotten out of more than one speeding ticket by doing this. Trick is to make it look like an internal struggle.

"Do you know why I pulled you over?" "I think I was going a little fast." "Any reason why?" "I was just-- No, officer. I'm sorry, I made a bad decision."

I don't think it holds up in court, however.

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