Competence Under Pressure: The Evidence Problem

Competence under pressure — evidence problem hero image
Competence under pressure

The evidence problem

Why most competence evidence reassures on paper - but falls short in reality.

The question that arrives quietly

At some point, every safety leader faces the same quiet moment.

It might be during an audit. It might be after a near miss. It might be standing in front of a board or an investigator (or a family).

“How do we know our people were competent?”

Most organisations have an answer ready: training records, certificates, assessments, refresher schedules - all neatly filed and easy to retrieve.

The problem is not that this evidence exists. The problem is what it actually proves.

What our evidence usually shows

Most competence systems are very good at showing that:

  • ✓
    training was delivered
  • ✓
    people attended
  • ✓
    content was covered
  • ✓
    assessments were completed

All of that is important. It demonstrates intent, effort, and governance. But it stops short of the thing we are really relying on in high-consequence work: how people behave when conditions are less than ideal.

Attendance tells us someone was present.

A pass mark tells us they could answer questions.

Neither tells us how they will respond when a situation is noisy, ambiguous, or time-pressured.

And that’s an important gap.

Assurance vs insight

There’s a subtle distinction here that’s worth making.

Much of our current evidence provides assurance. It reassures us - and others - that a process was followed. What it rarely provides is insight into behaviour.

Insight answers different questions:

  • ✓
    What did the person notice first?
  • ✓
    Where did they hesitate?
  • ✓
    What cues did they miss?
  • ✓
    Which choice felt hardest to make?

Those questions are uncomfortable, because they expose variability. And variability is harder to manage than compliance. But it’s also where improvement lives.

Why weak evidence feels strong

One reason this persists is that weak evidence often looks strong on paper.

  • ✓
    A complete training matrix feels robust.
  • ✓
    A signed-off assessment feels definitive.
  • ✓
    A green dashboard feels reassuring.

Until something goes wrong.

Then those same artefacts are asked to do a job they were never designed for: explaining behaviour under pressure.

This is why post-incident reviews so often include phrases like:

“They were fully trained.”

“They had completed the course.”

“There were no signs of a competence issue.”

All of those statements can be true - and yet we still miss the point.

The 3 a.m. question

There’s a simple test I’ve seen experienced leaders apply, sometimes without even realising it.

They look at their evidence and ask themselves, quietly:

“Would I be comfortable standing behind this at three o’clock in the morning, after an incident?”

Not in a courtroom, necessarily. More often in front of their own conscience - or a family, or a colleague.

If the answer relies heavily on attendance and compliance, it often doesn’t feel enough. Not because anyone did anything wrong - but because the evidence never looked at the right thing in the first place.

What better evidence starts to look like

Stronger evidence of competence doesn’t try to predict the future. That’s impossible. Instead, it focuses on observable behaviour in realistic conditions.

In high-risk environments, stronger evidence often shows up as:

  • ✓
    Hazards being recognised earlier - not just eventually
  • ✓
    More consistent decisions to stop, pause, or escalate under pressure
  • ✓
    Fewer “reasonable shortcuts” across repeated variations of the same task
  • ✓
    Clearer judgement during handovers, abnormal operations, or recovery from faults
This kind of evidence is imperfect and contextual - but far more defensible than attendance records alone.

Evidence as a learning tool

There’s another important shift here.

When evidence is used purely for assurance, people tend to perform to the test. They aim to pass. When evidence is used as part of learning, people start to reflect. They become curious about their own decisions.

This shift from judgement to insight changes the tone of competence entirely.
  • ✓
    It makes it safer to talk about mistakes.
  • ✓
    It makes improvement visible.
  • ✓
    And it builds trust rather than fear.

Bringing it together

The uncomfortable truth is this: many organisations already have plenty of evidence. It’s just evidence of the wrong thing.

If we want to strengthen competence under pressure, we need to be willing to look at how people actually behave - not just whether they were there when information was delivered.

Next: how organisations can begin to exercise competence safely and deliberately - and how doing so creates both stronger performance and more meaningful evidence, without adding unnecessary burden.