Contemporary workers often say “I’m not trained to handle this,” and feel that this means they have no responsibility for whatever situation they find their colleagues and themselves in.

Perhaps a teacher has a pupil with particular learning disabilities and the teacher wants them out of the class since they haven’t been on such-and-such a training course. A more upsetting example is when someone cuts themselves off, in the name of professionalism, from someone in emotional distress because they’re not a trained psychologist or something similar.

It’s good to recognise the things that one doesn’t have experience with and be quicker than usual to seek help from others when faced with those things. To abdicate responsibility by saying that one hasn’t been trained, though, assumes that the sanitised training courses of our corporo-political establishment are the authority on how to deal with unusual situations. Given how much a sham, box-ticking thing so many of these courses are, it is not right to give up so fast on one’s own synthesis of experience in and knowledge of related but different situations. The people who need help deserve a try in a lot of cases.

There must be a better way to frame admission of inability.