Anyone who has passed through the U.S. gauntlet of pilot training lately to come out the other side with a certificate knows about the FAA’s emphasis on risk management. The topic is an underlying reason for the airman certification standards, it has its own FAA handbook (FAA-H-8083-2) and is woven into all aspects of our training and evaluation.
A principle of risk management is self-awareness. If we’re not honest about our fitness for a task or if we convince ourselves it’s okay to ignore obvious shortcomings, our self-awareness cannot be complete. There will be gaps—blind spots. Most of the time, the blind spots are of little impact, but they can and do interfere with our ability to realistically assess our risk exposure.
