This article was originally published on LinkedIn on 16 November 2025. It has been moved to the riskfacilitator Insights library so the website remains the permanent source.[1]
I came across this research after seeing a LinkedIn post from Ben Hutchinson (PhD) , which highlighted the recent Lund University thesis by Daniel Ankersø and Søren Nielsen. It immediately caught my attention because it captures something many frontline professionals already understand. Sometimes the safest action is to not follow the procedure.
They call this idea Selective Intentional Non-Compliance (SINC). The definition matters:
A purposeful and deliberate deviation from a policy or procedure when a crew’s judgement is that deviating will improve safety.
This is not corner cutting. It is not laziness. It is not performance pressure. It is judgement. It is risk based thinking. It is the way skilled professionals maintain safety margins in dynamic environments.
Aviation is a tightly regulated and highly proceduralised industry. Yet 43 percent of the surveyed European commercial pilots in this study reported that they occasionally or frequently deviated from procedures. Nearly half. Normalised. Expected. And used deliberately to improve safety rather than undermine it.
The study reinforces what many of us have been arguing for years.
- Procedures are essential, but they cannot cover the full complexity of live operations.
- Real work is never identical to the imagined work captured in documents.
- Contextual judgement is not a threat to safety. It is a requirement.
One sentence from the paper captures this clearly:
Strict and unwavering adherence to SOPs is often unrealistic in dynamic operational contexts.
We see the same pattern in high pressure television production, major events, marine operations, and council environments. Anywhere real people are negotiating uncertainty, the system relies on thoughtful and timely adaptation.
Frontline workers constantly bridge the gap between work as imagined and work as done. They adapt, anticipate, and make risk based decisions in real time. They manage competing pressures, unpredictable conditions, and the variability that exists in human systems.
The study also dismantles the outdated belief that non-compliance is driven by carelessness. Pilots reported frequent underreporting of safety driven deviations, particularly when the adaptation worked and nothing negative occurred.
This creates a challenge for organisations. If the only behaviours they see are the ones that workers feel safe reporting, they miss the most valuable information they have. The everyday adaptations that keep the system functioning.
For me, the message is clear.
- If your systems cannot tolerate adaptive behaviour, they are not safe.
- If your procedures cannot flex, they are not realistic.
- If your reporting culture only captures what goes wrong, you are blind to what makes things go right.
This is why risk based thinking matters. This is why learning systems matter. And this is why organisations, whether airlines, councils, event teams, or production companies, need to reconsider how they design procedures, respond to deviations, and create environments where professional judgement is trusted rather than suppressed.
The safest organisations are not the ones that demand perfect compliance. They are the ones that understand why people adapt, learn from those adaptations, and strengthen the system accordingly.
Aviation is sending us a clear message. The question is whether we are ready to hear it.
A Study on Selective Intentional Non-Compliance (SINC)” by Daniel Vagner Ankersø & Søren Nielsen, Lund 2025 https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=9213938&fileOId=9213939[2]
References
- Paul Chivers, When Non-Compliance Makes Us Safer: What Aviation Teaches Us About Real-World Risk, LinkedIn, originally published 16 November 2025.
- https://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=9213938&fileOId=9213939, source linked in the original article, accessed 10 August 2026.