Mr. George Jonas in his novel Vengeance gives a remarkable account of how the Sixth Sense works and how reliable it is.

We, as quality or environment or food or risk auditors, consultants, trainers and writers should dig our Sixth Sense out of its grave and make it live again.

If Mr. Jonas records how reliable the Sixth Sense is in a delicate job as espionage, we shouldn’t be so arrogant to despise it in our daily routine or are often boring jobs.

We’ve been educated to look for and to believe in evidence: is this the only truth we’ve to rely upon?

What’s evidence, in the end, if not a consensual set of facts, or perceptions that are consensually considered as facts?

Sixth Sense perception(s) are factual perceptions in their own way.  It’s our historical western culture that prevents us to acknowledge them as input to awareness.

We have to be aware of this bias when assessing risks.  Often, our Sixth Sense will give us much more meaningful inputs than any rational reasoning.

When we assess risk management systems, we’re assessing people.  In the end, we’re apparently assessing documents, figures, equipment but what makes the system work or not work is people.

And people cannot be assessed with a check-list.  Auditors often OK an organization for registration because they like its people or the opposite.

It’s really a question of feeling – of sixth sense perceiving.

Google doesn’t provide much information on Sixth Sense beside quoting films.  Sixth Sense is still given some kind of magic, an evil meaning.  We possess it, we use it and we could – and should – do much more with it.

Let’s just think of how much money we could save using our Sixth Sense instead of striving for monumental evidence data.

Descartes’ saying “cogito ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) is certainly not the wisest expression of knowledge of the human being, “sum ergo cogito” (I am, therefore I think) fits much better the process approaches on which we work and live.

Reason is just one of the mechanisms on which the human brain works and instinct can be called “the other side of the moon”.   Sigmund Freud made it a good example with his ego and id schemes.

Let’s therefore not ignore what our Sixth Sense – or whatever you may name it – tells us.  Its messages and its signals are far less biased than what Reason tells us, in many cases – and it’s more immediate.

We’re more and more running short of time.  We have to be quick.  Decisions have to be made in milliseconds.   Reason is much slower than Instinct, though Instinct may reveal itself wrong in the short term.

My pledge is that we, as auditors, must also listen to our inner voice (IV), to our Sixth Sense, when assessing companies and organizations for their stated purposes and systems.  We must stop looking at evidences only.  We must bear in mind that any evidence can betray our eyes or ears.

When we’re assessed ourselves by certification bodies, our assessors certainly feel us, just as we feel our auditees.  So, let’s not be surprised when some of us get certified even if they studied just a little.

Why do we give so much importance to images and pictures?  That’s what strikes us most: it’s not Reason, it’s Instinct, it’s Sixth Sense more than Insight.

When I was a teen, at school they showed us documentaries produced by the DuPont, the titles of which were “what would be the World like without …”.   Of course, DuPont advertised its own products but what would we be like without Instinct, without his innate Sixth Sense?

Creativity and Innovation cannot really be taught at universities.  At the best, it can be taught how to control creativity or innovation projects, that is the process and its output, certainly not its creativity inputs.

If I were managing auditors or registrars, I would rate the auditees’ Sixth Sense – from one to ten or one to five or poor / good / excellent – to encourage them to use their Sixth Sense.

Auditors’ rationale is not always the best or most effective judgement criterion.

I read that when the USS Nautilus was first launched, some ESP experiments were conducted, with some success.  Whether we do believe or not, we must stop thinking that’s only magic: we’re still very far from Socrates’ commandment “know thyself”.