Major blind spots can both have good upsides and bad downsides. Some major blind spots are clearly unexpected and defensible. Some are easy to see using hindsight, as the world is now prone to do.
Most readers would classify IT projects running 200% over budget in the prior post as meeting two of the prior points. That seems to be a bad downside and they seem easy to see using hindsight. With 1 in 6 major IT projects running dramatically over budget, few readers would accept the middle comment that the overruns are either unexpected or defensible. Most would tend to do a post project review and focus on leadership, project management and communication aspects where the project did well and where lessons could be learned from shortfalls. Accepting a black swan statement sweeps such a review process under the table.
Before you decide how to classify efforts to evaluate your organizations abilities on this point, apply the following 3 questions to your enterprise risk management, ERM, contingency planning or strategic update processes:
- When does the claim about blind spots become more of an excuse than a defensible statement?
- What are the impacts and costs from failing to address such puffery?
- What is the monetary risk threshold that must be crossed before anyone should care?