When not to use a scan

The seven conditions

• 1. When the decision is already made

  If outcomes are predetermined and the scan exists to legitimise or soften an existing decision, it becomes performative, used to claim due diligence without genuine openness.

• 2. When participation is symbolic

  If participants' contributions won't meaningfully influence how the situation is framed or decided, the scan becomes extractive. Asking people to surface tensions, harms or grief without agency to affect outcomes can cause additional harm.

• 3. When power asymmetries make it unsafe to speak plainly

  The practice relies on people speaking truthfully about impacts, costs and risks. Where naming uncomfortable realities carries retaliation, career risk or social punishment, outputs will be distorted and participants may be placed at risk.

• 4. When the scan is legitimacy theatre

  If it is requested primarily to demonstrate consultation, inclusion or ethical consideration rather than to deepen understanding, it lends credibility to decisions unchanged by what is surfaced.

• 5. When time pressure eliminates any capacity to sense

  In acute crisis requiring immediate action, the practice may not fit in its full form. Forcing it under extreme urgency generates frustration or moral overload; it can instead be deferred, or adapted into post-decision reflection.

• 6. When outputs will be sanitised

  If insights on power, harm, long-tail impacts or grief are likely to be removed, diluted or reframed to fit existing narratives, the practice should not be undertaken. It depends on fidelity to what is seen.

• 7. When the work is expected to produce answers

  The practice does not deliver solutions, recommendations or certainty. If the explicit expectation is clear answers quickly, another tool is more appropriate: this practice improves perception; it doesn't resolve ambiguity.

What to do instead

Where a scan isn't appropriate as decision support, other uses may still be valid, provided they are named clearly and not confused with decision preparation: witnessing and documentation; post-decision reflection and learning; cultural diagnosis without immediate action; or individual sensemaking rather than a collective process.

Where the practice does fit

It is designed for five conditions: genuine complexity, not just complication; meaningful uncertainty, not just calculable risk; long time horizons; power asymmetries; and ethical weight, where harm, loss or endings are at stake. A structured appropriateness check runs before any scan begins, and where those conditions are present but the organisational culture cannot hold the practice safely, the plain answer is that it should not be used until those conditions change. That is not a limitation. It is an ethical stance.

Read more

How a scan works when the conditions do fit, or what the practice is.