Effective safeguarding starts with a conversation.
This means taking interest in a person, while at the same time observing, listening, and asking questions to ensure we get the fullest possible picture of the situation. This helps us to test or challenge our working assumptions.
Professional curiosity means looking beyond the information that is immediately available to us to dig deeper into the grey areas. It means we explore the areas where we might have doubts, to find some clarity. Sometimes, the things that people are not saying or doing can trigger this professional curiosity.
Professional Curiosity Is About Communication and Reflection
Good communication sometimes means we need to have difficult conversations. This should be followed by a period of reflection, in which we ask ourselves: What am I really seeing and hearing? Am I aware of my own biases?
A lack of professional curiosity can lead to missed opportunities in identifying less obvious safeguarding concerns. It means we might not act on that vague feeling that something’s not right.
Why Professional Curiosity is Important
Professional curiosity can help us identify the less obvious signs of abuse and neglect. It’s a mindset that allows us to gather relevant information and understand the risks an individual may be facing from their perspective. Once we understand these risks, we can respond to them.
Want to Adopt a Professional Curiosity Mindset?
Ask yourself these questions:
- What is your communication style? Can you hold difficult conversations and challenge others appropriately? This extends to the individual you’re concerned about, along with the professionals and networks around them.
- Do you need more support and guidance to communicate in this way?
- Do you receive supervision in your work? Does this supervision support a professional curiosity mindset?
- What is likely to trigger your professional curiosity?
- Are you an analytical thinker? Can you think about situations from different perspectives?
- Do you ever have an “intuition” about certain aspects of your role? Consider how you can articulate ‘intuition’ into an evidenced, professional view.
Professional Curiosity Can Apply To All Relationships
Here’s how you might start to apply a professional curiosity mindset to your work:
- Keep an open mind, and try to look beyond the obvious
- Actively show an interest in people and their past experience while building positive relationships.
- Once you have established what is happening, try to understand why it is happening.
- Always question your biases and consider the views of others.
- Make sure the person concerned is kept central to the decision making process. Professional curiosity works hand-in-hand with Making Safeguarding Personal principles.
- Listen to your ‘gut feeling’. If you feel that something is not right, then it probably isn’t. So, start asking yourself what else you can do to learn more about the situation.
- Reflect on your findings in supervision and with other professionals. Do others feel the same as you?
- Look to case histories and records, to see if there’s anything to back up your instincts.
Barriers to Professional Curiosity
Case reviews have told us that certain barriers can stand in the way of a professional curiosity mindset:
Disguised compliance
Rather than investigating a concern, some might just create the appearance that they’re co-operating. Through reducing their professional involvement, they can subtly downplay or draw attention away from concerns.
Professional optimism
“It couldn’t happen here.” In order to convince themselves that all is fine, some might rationalise away new or escalating risks. This could be because we want to believe the best in people, or because we have not recognised a member of staff’s disguised compliance (see above). If a staff member seems overly optimistic about a situation, it might be best to remain ‘respectfully uncertain’.
Normalisation
A situation, idea or action can be “normalised”, meaning it appears perfectly natural. When something’s “normalised”, we no longer question it. This can stand in the way of effective safeguarding, as it means that people might not recognise potential risks until it’s too late.
Accumulating Risk
Safeguarding reviews repeatedly demonstrate that professionals respond to each concern on its own terms, as if every new risk is an isolated incident. With a professional curiosity mindset, professionals might instead assess a concern within the context of the whole person. Or, they might consider the cumulative impact of a series of incidents over a longer period of time.
Professional Deference
Rather than taking the initiative to investigate a concern themselves, someone might instead defer to the opinion of a “higher status” professional. While you should always outline your observations and concerns to other professionals, professional curiosity means having the courage to challenge their opinions if they vary from your own.
Confirmation Bias
If you investigate a concern with preconceived notions of what happened, and why, there’s a risk that you’ll only look for evidence that supports your existing views. You might ignore any information that challenges your views, meaning you won’t even consider any other possibilities.
“Knowing But Not Knowing”
You might sense that something isn’t right without quite knowing just what isn’t right. With a professional curiosity mindset, you’ll know how to act on this instinct. Yet without this mindset, you’ll struggle to grasp the problem and take action.
Lack of Confidence in Managing Tension
Investigating a concern can lead to disagreement, disruption, and even some aggression. This can all divert attention away from the topic under discussion.
Inability to Deal With Uncertainty
When investigating a concern, you might get contested accounts, vague or retracted disclosures, and even some deception. The evidence you uncover may prove inconclusive. If you cannot prove anything, you might be tempted to give up. Yet you should never closedown unsubstantiated cases without any further assessment. You should instead cross-reference the information you have with case histories and records, to see if there’s anything that might shed some light on the situation.
An Essential Introduction to Safeguarding From The Ann Craft Trust
Our Introduction to Safeguarding eLearning course is designed for people who are new to safeguarding or working with adults, and those looking to assess their safeguarding knowledge.
It covers the essential information you need to know relating to safeguarding adults, how to recognise abuse, respond and report appropriately when a concern is raised.
Learn More About Our Introduction to Safeguarding Adults eLearning Course