---
id: "quote-bank-risk-professional"
type: "quote"
source_timestamps: ["§ Let's Talk About Nightmares", "¶1"]
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2026/05/what-are-your-companys-ai-nightmares"
source_title: "What Are Your Company's AI Nightmares?"
tags: ["industry-perspective", "nightmares"]
related: ["contrarian-values-vs-nightmares", "entity-fortune-500-bank-risk-professional"]
quote: "If you're not starting off by identifying the potential disasters, I don't know what you're doing."
speaker: "Unnamed Fortune 500 Bank AI Risk Professional"
speakers: ["Unnamed Fortune 500 Bank AI Risk Professional"]
sources: ["governance"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-governance"
originDay: 7
articleStem: "hbr-cl-82-ai-nightmares"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/05/what-are-your-companys-ai-nightmares"
sourceTitle: "What Are Your Company’s AI Nightmares?"
---
# "If you're not starting off by identifying the potential disasters..."

> "If you're not starting off by identifying the potential disasters, I don't know what you're doing."
> — An unnamed Fortune 500 bank AI risk professional ([[entity-unnamed-fortune-500-bank-ai-risk-professional]])

An industry-practitioner endorsement of the nightmare-first premise, offered to show that the approach reflects how seasoned risk professionals already think. It directly reinforces [[contrarian-values-vs-nightmares]] and [[claim-values-wrong-start]].