“It’s possible to be too feminist!” my teenage son announced at the dinner table the other night. “How so?” I asked. “People can just go over the top, that’s all,” he said.
“He’s right,” said my husband.

I’m sorry to report that my daughter and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. But I recovered my equilibrium and dug a little deeper into what my son meant. It turned out that he’s bothered by girls who talk as if women are superior to men – who stereotype men in mean-spirited ways.

“I agree, that’s not okay,” I said. “But it’s not feminism. Those girls are being sexist in the other direction. Feminism is about making sure girls and women have the same opportunities that men do – and vice versa.”

The exchange got me thinking about how biases affect our behavior at work. Despite my rather simplistic statement at the dinner table, I’m perfectly aware that bias is anything but simple or straightforward. The truth is that most of us have biases that we’d rather not admit to. HBR published a fascinating article a couple of years back -- How (Un)Ethical Are You? -- which encouraged readers to take the Implicit Association Tests (implicit.harvard.edu). Taking the test persuaded me that what we think we believe isn’t always what we unconsciously believe. Most people who take the test favor young people, rich people, and white people over older, poorer, darker people, for example. And people have biases in favor of their own social, racial, and gender groups that come into play during hiring, assignment, and promotion decisions.

I recently had to confront a bias in myself that I hadn’t really been aware of. I was reading an article we’re going to publish in the fall which looks at what Gulf countries are doing with the massive amounts of cash they’ve built up. They’re investing in their own infrastructure and also investing heavily in Northern Africa, China, India, and the rest of Asia. Something about the article made me uneasy. It didn’t take me long to realize I was uncomfortable because North America and Western Europe were barely mentioned. I guess that at some primitive, implicit, indefensible level, I still think that the United States and Western Europe are the center of the universe, and I get worried when that’s not the case.

I immediately went next door to my colleague Anand Raman, who’s Indian, and confessed. “I just realized you guys are taking over,” I said, mostly joking. “It was weird to feel invisible.” Anand laughed. “We’re not taking over,” he said. “But we might achieve parity.”

Have you had surprising moments of clarity at work, when you realized you were more biased than you’d thought? Any suggestions for managing bias?