The Bug You Can't Debug with Code
Recognizing Emotional Blind Spots in Tech
I've been in the trenches long enough to know what a proper bug looks like. The kind that crashes the system, makes the network hiccup, or throws up a cryptic error message that sends you into a search engine rabbit hole. But over the years, I've come to realize that the most frustrating, project-derailing, team-fracturing "bugs" aren't in the code or the config files at all. They're in us.
I’m talking about emotional blind spots. These are the logic errors in our human systems that we're often completely unaware of. Our tech-centric culture trains us to see what's on the screen or in the hardware, but not what’s happening in the quiet spaces between people. Like a rogue line of code, these blind spots can cause chaos, and no amount of technical skill can fix them.
So, what do these human "bugs" look like in the wild?
The "User Empathy" Bug
In the IT consulting world, we often get a support ticket that reads something like, "The network is slow." Our immediate, well-honed instinct is to check bandwidth, run diagnostics, and troubleshoot routers. We assume we know what the client or user wants (more speed!), but we often miss the root cause. We solve the problem we think they have, not the one they’re actually experiencing. Maybe the network is fine, but a critical application is poorly optimized, or a process is running inefficiently. The result is a perfectly tuned network, but the user is still frustrated. The poorly optimized application just does its poorly optimized thing… but faster! (This isn’t the “fail fast” we had in mind.) It's a technical success, but a human failure because we didn't listen deeply enough to the symptoms.
The "Team Communication" Bug
This is the classic one. We use blunt, logical language in our chats and emails, thinking we’re just being efficient. We assume everyone operates on the same rational wavelength, but we ignore the emotional subtext. A terse, "This isn't working" in a Slack message can sound like an accusation, even if it was intended as a simple status update. We also tend to communicate with a "fix it" mentality. When a team member voices a concern, our immediate reflex is to offer a technical solution, rather than acknowledging their frustration first. This leads to friction, resentment, and a breakdown in trust that can be hard to track down. Listening and acknowledging are the first two steps to a successful resolution.
The "Feedback" Bug
Delivering feedback can feel like writing a technical report. We present a punch list of what's broken and what needs to be fixed, but we often fail to consider the emotional impact. The person on the receiving end can interpret this as a personal attack on their work (their "code"). A similar bug happens when we receive feedback. Instead of seeing it as an opportunity to improve our own system, our ego gets in the way. We get defensive and spend time justifying our decisions rather than listening. This prevents us from patching vulnerabilities in our own work and relationships. Awareness is key. Speaking of awareness…
The "Self-Awareness" Bug (The Root Cause)
This is the biggest one. It’s the original bug, the one that makes all the others possible. This is the simple fact that we are often completely unaware of our own emotional state (frustration, anxiety, impatience) and how it’s affecting our decisions and interactions. We snap at a colleague without realizing we're just stressed about a deadline. We misread a client's mood because we're focused on our own internal pressure. This "bug" in our own system is the hardest to detect because it's so close to us, but it's the one that causes the most damage.
Debugging the Human System
Debugging these "human bugs" requires a different kind of toolkit. It's not about being "soft." It's about being a better troubleshooter for the most complex system you'll ever encounter: the people around you, and yourself. It starts with recognizing these patterns (these bugs) exist, and accepting that they're a natural part of our industry's historical wiring.
In the posts to come, we'll start to explore some of these tools and techniques. We'll talk about how to start listening more deeply, communicating with intention, and building a better emotional infrastructure for your team and your projects. After all, the best code in the world won't matter if your human system is constantly crashing.