Psychological safety has undergone a strange transformation.
What began as the belief that people should be able to speak candidly, ask questions, admit mistakes, challenge authority, and raise concerns without fear of humiliation or retaliation has increasingly become something else: the belief that discomfort itself is evidence of dysfunction. A questioned request becomes invalidation. A boundary becomes exclusion. And “no” becomes proof that the organization was never safe to begin with.
A lawsuit against SHRM offers a useful, and uncomfortable, case study.
SHRM has been sued by a woman named Fiona Torres who applied for a product management position in 2024 and disclosed on her CV that she had lived with Type 1 diabetes for approximately 30 years. SHRM knew about her condition before interviewing her, selecting her, and extending a conditional offer of employment. After receiving the offer, Torres requested permission to bring her diabetes alert dog into SHRM’s Alexandria office.
SHRM said no.
And there’s the headline: The world’s largest HR association said no to a service dog in the workplace. What planet are we living on?
It is a good headline. It is also an incomplete story. So let’s dig in.
SHRM did not reject Torres when it learned she had diabetes; it already knew. Nor, according to its filing, did it immediately withdraw the offer when she requested an accommodation. SHRM asked for documentation, reviewed information from her physicians, consulted counsel, proposed several alternatives, and repeatedly expressed its desire for her to join the organization.
Those alternatives included facilitating the use of her continuous glucose monitor and insulin pump, allowing additional breaks to check her blood sugar, permitting food and drinks at her workstation, and providing flexible leave when necessary. SHRM also invited Torres to propose other options and asked her to consult her physician about whether its suggested accommodations could work.
What SHRM declined was not her disability. It declined her preferred solution.
Let’s be clear, I believe the reaction is particularly charged because the defendant is SHRM. If the organization representing the HR profession will not approve the accommodation an applicant requested, critics assume something must be especially wrong. Surely the HR organization should be more compassionate. Surely it should be pro-employee, pro-accommodation and, apparently, pro-dog.
But that expectation reflects an outdated understanding of HR: the idea that its purpose is to make employees happy, avoid discomfort, and say yes whenever saying no might appear unkind. Modern HR is not the corporate kindness department. Its responsibility is to create the conditions in which people and the business can succeed together. That requires judgment. It requires taking a disability seriously without abandoning the obligation to evaluate whether a particular accommodation is necessary, effective, and reasonable.
In fact, I agree that SHRM should be held to a high standard precisely because it represents HR. But the standard should be the quality of its process, not the popularity of its answer. Did it listen? Did it investigate? Did it request relevant information? Did it offer potentially effective alternatives? Did it remain open to continued discussion? SHRM’s filing presents evidence that it did all five. Torres disputes whether the alternatives it proposed were actually effective. That is the question the court must resolve. But in my opinion, expecting HR to approve every requested accommodation is not inclusion. It is the old personnel-department model wearing progressive language.
“I believe your need is real” and “I approve the exact remedy you requested” are not the same sentence. The future of HR depends on our ability to say the first without being coerced into the second.
Torres maintained that the alternatives were insufficient because continuous glucose monitors can malfunction, fall off, require warm-up periods, or become temporarily unavailable. Her dog, she argued, protected her during those gaps. Those concerns deserve to be taken seriously.
SHRM, however, pointed to evidence that Torres regularly managed her diabetes without the dog. According to its filing, she had traveled internationally without him for periods of nine to eleven days, attended concerts and exercise classes without him, worked through long meetings without him, and said she could complete the position’s required business travel without him. She also reportedly said she might not bring the dog on her first day.
SHRM concluded that Torres could perform the job safely with other accommodations. Torres disagreed and refused to accept the position without the dog. After several weeks of discussion, SHRM rescinded the offer.
So here is the larger question: When did an organization’s obligation to listen become an obligation to agree?
Psychological safety does not mean every request must be granted. It means people can explain what is at stake, challenge assumptions, offer evidence, and question the organization’s proposed solution. It also means the organization can ask clarifying questions, examine inconsistencies, weigh alternatives, and reach a conclusion the other person does not like.
A psychologically safe culture gives you the right to make the request. It does not give you the right to dictate the answer.
This matters because the language of safety has expanded beyond its useful meaning. Disagreement becomes harm. Accountability becomes aggression. Resistance to someone’s preferred outcome is interpreted as resistance to the person.
If the only acceptable evidence of care is compliance, the interactive process is no longer interactive.
The law recognizes this distinction, although with an important qualification. The Americans with Disabilities Act does not necessarily entitle an employee to the accommodation they prefer. An employer may choose among reasonable alternatives, but only if the accommodation it selects is effective. Torres’s legal argument is that SHRM’s alternatives were not. SHRM’s is that they were. That question belongs to the court. The broader principle does not: participation in the accommodation process does not guarantee control over its outcome.
The most revealing evidence in SHRM’s filing may concern what was happening outside the official conversation. While SHRM’s representatives were exchanging professional emails and continuing the accommodation process, Torres was allegedly sending friends messages calling SHRM personnel “twats,” wishing Type 1 diabetes upon an HR representative’s family, saying “please just kill yourself,” and joking about keying the representative’s car. If accurately characterized, those messages do not decide whether SHRM complied with the ADA. A person can behave terribly and still have a valid legal claim. But they do illuminate something culturally significant: how quickly disagreement can become moral condemnation, and how easily the person delivering an unwanted answer can cease to be regarded as a person at all.
A safe workplace is not one in which no one ever hears no. It is one in which no is explained, questions are permitted, alternatives are genuinely considered, and disappointment does not require either side to turn the other into a villain. Psychological safety governs the quality of the conversation. It does not predetermine the answer.