Personal bias is just the reflection of our formed personal views upon our sense of right or wrong including our individual personal experiences and environment that we have been exposed to. Sometimes broad generalized bias can enhance or fade the way we communicate, behave or relate to others, and even lead to problems. Therefore, it’s important to note that biases can be positive or negative. In the many years working in the higher education environment, I have had numerous opportunities to witness others' personal bias that could have been considered as improper, but for the most unacknowledged.

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Thinking back, I recall a particular bias that took place at the institution I currently work at. There was a time when a newly hired Vice-president, a couple of months after settling into his office, suggested the move of one of his assigned Executive Assistants from his office to another area where she didn’t have to interact with many people. He claimed this would allow her the opportunity to focus on applying her current advanced computer software skills in a department that could benefit better from her knowledge and experience. This may sound like a good approach to improve services while better utilizing employee skills and resources. But, the true underlying reason was that the Vice-President perceived the Executive Assistant’s heavy accent as an issue to communicate effectively and as a risk to mishandle sensitive matters that came through his office.

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Evidently, his bias was that people with heavy accents shouldn’t interact deeply with the public. This narrowed assessment view can be considered as negative and discriminative. But in the professional world and especially in the field of higher education administration, it’s all about how things are worded and presented. I must admit that the Executive Assistant was hard to understand at times, but her knowledge and experience in her career field surpassed the qualifications that other assistants had. Negative bias can limit people within our own assumptions and can often be uttered out loud, or even go unacknowledged leading them to perpetuate and spread within the workplace. This is exactly the atmosphere that we currently live in.

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One of the challenges many workplaces struggle with is how to acknowledge differences. Some workplaces want to act like there are no differences and treat others as is everyone is the same. But, this is simply not true. Differences are unavoidable, especially with the increase of population diversity in the United States. Diversity can actually make workplaces stronger if we learn to acknowledge and navigate through those differences. Acknowledging differences can avoid leading to perpetuating biases. Recognizing that the Executive Assistant has an accent is fine, but assuming characteristics about her because she has an accent is not. Knowing that English is her second language is fine, but basing our assessment of her abilities on that is not. Acknowledging people’s differences is an essential part of recognizing each individual, but when the difference is used to generalize individuals based on what we think of that group, it becomes a bias.

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There is no doubt that we all hold some form of bias. But we need to be aware of the biases that we might have formed and analyzed if there is any logic behind them and why we might be holding onto a bias. Sometimes, it could be fear of the unknown, the reflection of a bad personal experience, or even a tool we unconsciously use to help us feel better about ourselves. Sometimes avoiding the big elephant in the room is a way to loophole around difficult situations, especially with groups we don’t understand or that make us feel uncomfortable for some reason. We need to behave with more awareness and seek to engage with others who are different from ourselves. If we can learn to dispel the biases that we might hold, remembering that everyone is a unique individual, not a stereotype of a group, and appreciate the differences and unique elements that make a person who they are, we may avoid bias from leading us into future problems.

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