When Risk Sensitivity Becomes Risk Blindness - A cognitive diversity case study

I was reading the Sydney Morning Herald coverage this week about the governance issues that led to the cancellation of the Adelaide Writers’ Festival.

The reporting focused, understandably, on process, accountability, and reputational fallout. But as I read it, I found myself asking a different question:

What did the decision environment around that board actually look like?

So I profiled the board using Wizer Snaps — a tool that looks at decision styles, not background, expertise, or intent.

What came back really surprised me. I have not encounted board decision-making profiles like it.

Even after recalibrating the inputs, the pattern was striking: a clear majority of the board showed Guardian decision traits, with almost all members displaying Guardian as either a primary or secondary lens.

That matters — not because Guardian thinking is a problem, but because of how rare it usually is.

In most populations, Guardian is the least common decision profile. Guardians are the people attuned to institutional protection: reputation, compliance, process integrity, and risk containment. They are essential to good governance.

Seeing so many in one room is statistically unusual.

Cognitive diversity research helps explain how this can happen.

As Dr Juliet Bourke’s work shows, people tend to gravitate toward others who think in familiar ways. Shared decision lenses create trust, predictability, and a sense of alignment — qualities that are highly valued in board environments. Over time, this can lead to boards that are deeply capable and well-intentioned, yet cognitively concentrated.

This isn’t groupthink in the crude sense. It’s more subtle.

When Guardian thinking dominates:

• risk doesn’t disappear — it narrows

• the most salient risks become those closest to institutional protection

• other risks — public response, narrative collapse, second-order consequences — can be underweighted, not because they are ignored, but because they feel less governable

Adelaide Writers’ Festival Board – Decision Profile Breakdown (Snaps)

• Guardian: 5 of 9 (56%)

• Achiever: 2 of 9 (22%)

• Collaborator: 2 of 9 (22%) In other words, a board can be highly risk-aware and still mislocate where the most consequential risk lies.
  

The Adelaide Writers’ Festival case reads less like a failure of care, and more like a failure of decision balance. The decision styles that excel at protecting institutions were present in force. The styles that challenge framing, re-define risk, or test external consequence appear to have had less weight in the room.

This is why cognitive diversity matters.

Decision styles are often invisible from inside the room.

Their effects rarely are. *NB for an comprehensive profile we would have the individuals of the board take their full Decision profiles