---
id: "quote-lip-service-to-fairness"
type: "quote"
source_timestamps: ["§ Let's Talk About Nightmares", "¶4"]
source_url: "https://hbr.org/2026/05/what-are-your-companys-ai-nightmares"
source_title: "What Are Your Company's AI Nightmares?"
tags: ["motivation", "values"]
related: ["claim-nightmares-create-alignment"]
quote: "It's easy to pay lip service to fairness and accountability and then go on with your day. But a nightmare—a scenario with real consequences, real people affected, real reputational and legal exposure—generates a sense of urgency that no ethics statement ever produced."
speaker: "Reid Blackman"
speakers: ["Reid Blackman"]
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?"
---
# "It's easy to pay lip service to fairness..."

> "It's easy to pay lip service to fairness and accountability and then go on with your day. But a nightmare—a scenario with real consequences, real people affected, real reputational and legal exposure—generates a sense of urgency that no ethics statement ever produced."
> — Reid Blackman ([[entity-reid-blackman]])

The psychological heart of the argument: it contrasts the *apathy* generated by abstract ethics discussion with the *behavioral change* driven by concrete disasters. It is the emotional evidence for [[claim-nightmares-create-alignment]] and the motivational logic underneath [[contrarian-values-vs-nightmares]] and [[contrarian-corporate-optimism-liability]].