If you have read my blog before you will know that I was a fan of Lance Armstrong for many years (whilst secretly realising that he was a cheat) but I have learned a lot from watching this whole process and the greatest thing I have learned is that people just don’t ask the question.
Armstrong achieved a situation where he was almost immune from the questions being asked because his responses would put people down or he would deny them access entirely if he didn’t like the questions being asked.
It strikes me that often people do want to know the answer but they seem scared to ask the question and I don’t quite understand this. I have always been the type of guy that asks the questions. I use a strategy a lot of the time along the lines of “I know I am a poorly educated Scotsman” or “I am sorry is I’m being abit thick about this but could you explain…” and this gives me the way in to ask the questions that other people seem to find difficult.
We have been having discussions in dentistry of late about other aspects of clinical care or the abilities of some practitioners to be able to provide appropriate care and it seems that there are quite a lot of questions in my profession that people seem to know the answer to but don’t want to ask in the first place.
To me this is just cowardice and people accepting the status quo and that is a dangerous game to play.
As we saw in Armstrong – the poison spreads and the infected roots get deeper and deeper. It is time to just ask those questions.