Why Do We Fail to Do What's Right? Bring Your Questions for Authors of Blind Spots

We recently published a guest post on the ethics of the decision-making that led to the 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster. That post was adapted from a new book called Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do about It. The authors are Max Bazerman, a professor at Harvard Business School, and Ann Tenbrunsel, a professor of business ethics at Notre Dame.
Blind Spots looks into the gap between our intended and actual behavior; why we often overestimate our ability to do what’s right; and how we convince ourselves to do what we want rather than what we should. The authors tie their theory to a string of recent blowups, including: baseball’s steroid scandal, Enron’s collapse, Bernie Madoff‘s fraud, and corruption in the tobacco industry.
Brazerman and Tenbrunsel have agreed to answer your questions, so fire away in the comments section. As with all our Q&A’s, we’ll post their answers in short course.
To prime the pump, here’s the Table of Contents from Blind Spots:
1. The Gap between Intended and Actual Ethical Behavior
2. Why Traditional Approaches to Ethics Won’t Save You
3. When We Act against Our Own Ethical Values
4. Why You Aren’t as Ethical as You Think You Are
5. When We Ignore Unethical Behavior
6. Placing False Hope in the “Ethical Organization”
7. Why We Fail to Fix Our Corrupted Institutions
8. Narrowing the Gap: Interventions for Improving Ethical Behavior