Recently I became aware that the ISO 9001 requirements pertaining to preventive action are sometimes referred to as the “fortune-telling clause.” The deprecating implication is that attempting to implement preventive actions is as silly as relying on a two-bit sideshow palm reader to help you make life-altering decisions. Once they’ve sufficiently disparaged the value of the quality management system (QMS) requirement, individuals shrug their shoulders and proceed to assemble a tidy file of superfluous paperwork attesting to preventive measures implemented, just in time for the surveillance audit dog-and-pony show.

The prevailing sentiment is that it’s impossible to foresee everything that can go wrong and, further, the cost for the level of vigilance required to predict many things is wasteful and prohibitive. So, why bother doing anything?

It’s disingenuous to abdicate responsibility for preventive action because the goal abides in the realm of potentiality.

We conduct preventive actions every day as a matter of course. There are safety belts, fire drills, dental cleanings, electrical grounds, stop signs, immunizations, and condoms. They all help prevent bad things from happening.

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