Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast where we have conversations with futurists, innovators and big thinkers about what lies ahead. We explore emerging trends on the horizon and what it means to be a futurist.
Think Forward: Conversations with Futurists, Innovators and Big Thinkers
FIF Series EP 90 - Ethical Dimensions of Foresight Practice
Ethical considerations are fundamental to effective foresight work, yet they often receive less attention than methods and frameworks. Our responsibility when engaging in futures work shapes decisions, influences perspectives, and potentially impacts countless lives.
• The futures we choose to explore direct attention and resources toward certain possibilities while neglecting others
• What gets imagined gets prioritized—foresight practitioners are active participants in creating the future
• Inclusivity means considering whose perspectives are represented in our futures and whose voices are heard
• Practical approaches include diverse participation, multiple perspectives, power awareness, and accessibility
• Transparency requires making values, assumptions, and limitations visible rather than presenting work as objective
• Clearly state guiding values, acknowledge key assumptions, declare limitations, and balance presentation
• Practice consequential thinking by actively considering potential impacts of your work
• Develop an ethical framework with principles that guide your foresight practice
• Conduct ethical reviews throughout your process to reflect on whose perspectives might be missing
• Seek diverse input, practice reflexivity about your own biases, and build ethical capacity in others
Take one aspect of your current foresight work and view it explicitly through an ethical lens. Ask who is represented and who is missing, what values and assumptions underlie this work, and what responsibility you bear for how it might influence decisions. Then make one concrete change based on your reflection.
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Thank you for joining me on this ongoing journey into the future. Until next time, stay curious, and always think forward.
Welcome to the Think Forward podcast, where we speak with futurists, innovators and big thinkers. Come along with your host, steve Fisher, and explore the future together.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to Foundations in Foresight a Think Forward series. I'm Steve Fisher, and today we're diving into a topic that doesn't always get the attention it deserves, but is absolutely fundamental to doing foresight work well the ethical dimensions of futures practice. When we talk about looking ahead, building scenarios and designing strategies for the future, we often focus on the methods, the frameworks and the practical applications, but underneath all of that lies something more profound the responsibility we bear when we engage in work that shapes decisions, influences perspectives and potentially impacts countless lives. In this episode, we'll explore the ethical considerations that should guide our foresight work. We'll tackle questions like who benefits from the futures we imagine? Whose voices are included or excluded in our process? What responsibilities do we have when our work influences real-world strategies and decisions? By the end, you'll have a clear understanding of how to practice foresight, not just effectively, but ethically, ensuring that your work contributes to more inclusive, responsible and thoughtful futures.
Speaker 2:Let's dive in the power and responsibility of futures work. At its core, foresight work is an exercise in influence. When we create scenarios, develop strategies or build future worlds, we're not just describing possibilities. We're actively shaping how people think about what's ahead. That's a profound responsibility. Think about it this way, the futures we choose to explore, the scenarios we choose to highlight and the strategies we recommend all direct attention and resources towards certain possibilities while potentially neglecting others. The old saying what gets measured gets managed applies here too. What gets imagined gets prioritized. This means that as futures practitioners, we're not neutral observers. We're participants in creating the future, whether we acknowledge that role or not. And with that participation comes responsibility. Consider a business using scenario planning to prepare for market disruption. If all the scenarios assume continued economic growth and technological advancement, but none consider environmental limits or social upheaval, that shapes the organization's perception of what's possible and likely. The futures we fail to imagine can be just as impactful as those we do. This isn't about doom and gloom. It's about recognizing that our choices about what futures to explore matter. They reflect values, assumptions and worldviews that deserve careful examination.
Speaker 2:Inclusivity Whose futures are we designing? One of the most important ethical considerations in foresight work is inclusivity Whose perspectives are represented in our futures? Whose voices are heard in the process? Whose interests are served by the scenarios we develop? The tendency to design futures that reflect our own backgrounds, experiences and assumptions is natural but limiting. It's also potentially harmful when foresight work fails to consider the impacts on marginalized or vulnerable communities, for example. Think about scenarios around the future of work and automation. A narrow view might focus exclusively on knowledge workers and professionals, overlooking impacts on service workers, rural communities or people without advanced education. Or consider futures of healthcare that assume everyone has equal access to technology and resources, an assumption that simply doesn't match reality for many people.
Speaker 2:True inclusivity and foresight goes beyond just considering different perspectives. It means actively engaging diverse stakeholders in the process itself, not just as subjects to study, but as participants with agency and insight. Here are some practical approaches to more inclusive foresight Diverse participation Include people from various backgrounds, disciplines, cultures and socioeconomic contexts in your foresight process. This isn't just about demographic diversity, but cognitive diversity too. Different ways of seeing and understanding the world. Multiple perspectives Deliberately explore how different stakeholders might experience the same future differently. A technological shift might benefit some groups while disadvantaging others. Power awareness Pay attention to power dynamics, both in your process who speaks, who decides and in your scenarios who benefits, who bears costs? Accessibility Make your foresight processes and outputs accessible to people with different abilities, languages and levels of technical knowledge. Remember inclusive foresight doesn't mean avoiding challenging futures or difficult conversations. In fact, it often means having more nuanced, complex discussions about potential impacts and trade-offs, but it does mean ensuring that the benefits and burdens of different futures are explicitly considered across diverse populations.
Speaker 2:Transparency Making values and assumptions visible. Another key ethical dimension of foresight practice is transparency being clear about the values, assumptions and limitations that shape your work. All futures work is influenced by the worldviews, values and biases of those creating it. This isn't inherently problematic, but it becomes an ethical issue when those influences remain hidden or unacknowledged, especially when the work is presented as objective or neutral. For example, a scenario that assumes continuous technological progress reflects certain values about innovation and human capability. A framework that prioritizes economic growth over environmental sustainability embeds specific assumptions about what matters most. Neither approach is necessarily wrong, but presenting either as value neutral would be misleading.
Speaker 2:Ethical foresight practice requires making these underlying values and assumptions visible. Explicit values Clearly state the values that guide your future's work. Is it focused on equity, economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, innovation, some combination? Your future's work Is it focused on equity, economic prosperity, environmental sustainability, innovation, some combination? Acknowledged assumptions Identify key assumptions that underpin your scenarios or strategies. What do you assume about human behavior, technological capability, institutional stability or resource availability? Declared limitations Be upfront about what your foresight process doesn't cover, what perspectives might be missing and where there's significant uncertainty. Balance presentation when presenting scenarios or strategies. Avoid framing some as obviously desirable and others as clearly negative, without acknowledging the value judgments involved. This transparency serves several important purposes it helps audiences interpret your work appropriately, it invites critical engagement rather than passive acceptance, and it acknowledges that future's work is not a purely technical exercise, but a profoundly human one, shaped by values and perspectives.
Speaker 2:Responsibility from insight to impact. Perhaps the most challenging ethical dimension of foresight work concerns the real-world impacts of our practice. What responsibility do we bear for how our work is used? What obligations do we have to those who might be affected by decisions made based on our scenarios or strategies? Consider these situations you develop scenarios for a company that lead them to shift operations away from a community that depends on those jobs. Your foresight work for a government agency influences policy decisions that affect vulnerable populations. The futures you present make certain outcomes seem inevitable, potentially creating self-fulfilling prophecies. In each case, your work has consequences that extend beyond the conference room or strategy document.
Speaker 2:How do we approach this responsibility ethically? First, we can practice what some call consequential thinking, actively considering the potential impacts of our work, both intended and unintended. This doesn't mean we can predict all outcomes, but we can develop the habit of asking if this scenario influenced decisions, what might happen? Who might benefit? Who might be harmed? Second, we can maintain ongoing engagement rather than treating foresight as a one-time exercise. This means following through to see how our work is being used, remaining available to clarify or contextualize findings, and being willing to revisit assumptions and conclusions as conditions change. Third, we can build capacity for ethical reflection within organizations and communities using our foresight work. This might mean explicitly discussing ethics during the process, building in checkpoints for ethical consideration or developing frameworks that help decision makers consider diverse impacts. And finally, we can sometimes simply say no. There may be situations where we believe our foresight work would be used in ways that violate our ethical principles or could cause significant harm. In these cases, the most ethical choice might be to decline the work or to reshape it in ways that mitigate potential negative impacts, building an ethical foresight practice. So how do we put all this together into a cohesive approach to ethical foresight?
Speaker 2:Here are some practical steps you can take to strengthen the ethical dimensions of your practice Develop an ethical framework. Create or adopt a set of principles that guide your foresight work. These might include commitments to inclusivity, transparency and responsibility, along with specific practices that support these values. Conduct ethical reviews. Build regular check-ins throughout your foresight process to reflect on ethical considerations. Ask questions like whose perspectives are we missing? What assumptions remain unexamined? How might our work impact different groups? Seek diverse input. Actively invite feedback from people with different backgrounds, expertise and life experiences.
Speaker 2:This isn't just about improving the quality of your work. It's an ethical imperative to ensure multiple perspectives are considered. Practice reflexivity. Regularly reflect on your own position, biases and values. How are they shaping the futures you imagine? What might you be missing because of your own limitations of experience or perspective? Build ethical capacity. Help others develop their own ethical foresight practice through education, mentorship and open discussion of ethical challenges. Remember, ethical foresight isn't about achieving perfect neutrality or avoiding all potential negative impacts. Neither is possible. It's about approaching the work with awareness, intentionality and a commitment to reducing harm while maximizing beneficial outcomes.
Speaker 2:Final thoughts the ethical dimensions of foresight practice aren't separate from the methodological or practical aspects. They're integral to doing the work well. A scenario that excludes important perspectives isn't just ethically problematic, it's likely to be strategically flawed as well. A strategy that ignores potential negative impacts isn't just irresponsible, it's probably incomplete. By bringing ethical considerations to the forefront of our foresight practice, we not only fulfill our responsibilities as practitioners, we also improve the quality and usefulness of our work. We develop more comprehensive, nuanced and resilient visions of the future. We build greater trust with stakeholders and communities and we increase the likelihood that our work contributes positively to shaping the futures that emerge.
Speaker 2:As you continue developing your foresight practice, I encourage you to regularly reflect on these ethical dimensions. Ask yourself who benefits from the futures I'm exploring? Whose voices am I including or excluding? What responsibility do I bear for how my work influences decisions? These aren't easy questions and they don't have simple, permanent answers, but the practice of asking them and letting them guide your work is at the heart of ethical foresight.
Speaker 2:Your challenge. Here's my challenge for you this week. Take one aspect of your current foresight work, whether it's a scenario you're developing, a strategy you're designing or a future you're exploring and view it explicitly through an ethical lens. Ask yourself who is represented in this future and who is missing. What values and assumptions underlie this work, and have I made them explicit? What responsibility do I bear for how this work might influence decisions? Then make one concrete change to your approach based on your reflection. Perhaps add a new perspective to your scenario, make your assumptions more explicit or consider potential impacts more thoroughly. Share your insights with colleagues, if possible. Ethical reflection is often most powerful when it's collaborative. In our next episode, we'll explore how to create and sustain your personal futures, practice building habits and approaches that keep you future ready in your daily life. Until then, keep exploring possibilities, stay ethically engaged and, as always, think forward.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the Think Forward podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms and at wwwthinkforwardshowcom, as well as on YouTube under Think Forward Show. See you next time.
