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After many years in corporate learning I must admit that one accolade has eluded me. I have never had one of my training courses featured in the media in the local paper, let-alone in every media outlet around the world. That is something that the trainers at Starbucks probably wish they could not lay claim to, but it has happened.

The problem is that one day two people walked into a Starbucks coffee shop and sat down without ordering a drink.They decided not to order a drink until their colleague arrived. Nothing unusual in that I suppose, as someone who is rarely late for any appointment it is a situation that I have found myself in many times. But on this occasion in this coffee shop the police were called and the two men were arrested.

What happened next has been covered by the full spectrum of media outlets around the world.

I am not sure whether I should be surprised, shocked or encouraged by the level of media coverage that this incident has achieved.

On one level it is great that an incident of what has become known as unconscious bias has been acknowledged by a major global corporation. Perhaps it is not the incident itself but their response which gathered the press coverage?

I say this because discussions with friends and colleagues demonstrate just how frequently people of all descriptions are subject to the unconscious biases of other people.

One of the most famous cases was when the American media billionaire faced problems in a shop when she wanted to buy a handbag.

The conclusion drawn in that situation was that the shop assistant did not believe that someone of colour would be able to afford the expensive handbag.

I had a similar experience in a designer boutique on Rodeo Drive in Beverley Hills, when the shop assistant explained that the discount rail was at the back of the store. But then the same thing happened to the character played by Julia Roberts in the hit 1990 film Pretty Woman

Unconscious bias is essentially when we observe a person or group of people and reach conclusions about them which we then use to make a decision about them. These conclusions and decisions are often based on stereotypes that we have constructed from what we have seen in the media, learnt from past experiences or simply picked-up along the way, rather than judging the person as an individual.

The focus of discrimination is often on those characteristics that are protected in laws like the Equality Act 2010, but the unconscious bias can cover all sorts of characteristics.

When I started work in my first industrial HR role I was told that the company did not employ people from a particular social housing estate. Essentially a few bad past employees from the estate had tainted the reputation of everyone who lived there.

This sort of unconscious bias is caused when we transfer the experience of one person with a characteristic to everyone who has that characteristic. It can be negative as in this case where people are given a cloud over them, or positive when people are given a halo effect because they have a characteristic that we have positive associations with.

The unconscious bias can simply be based on our desire to hang out with people who are like us. As Acas describes on their website a manager “who wasn't successful at school may listen to, or be supportive of, an employee who left school without qualifications because, subconsciously, they are reminded of their younger self.”

I have met employers who always favour graduates over other candidates regardless of whether the job requires a degree level education or not. I have also experienced employers who would ask middle-aged candidates what type of school they went to, to make sure that they only hire people who attended private schools.

Often these unconscious biases are based on a feeling of affinity with the other person. We feel comfortable being around people who are like us.

Behaviour which reinforces our unconscious bias is usually noticed because we like to see things which prove we are right, whereas behaviours that question our unconscious biases are all too often ignored, because no one wants to be wrong, do they?

This subconscious processing of information is how we justify the decisions we make that are based on those unconscious biases.

In my early days as a trainer I was tasked with rewriting the company induction programme. Of course I had to include a session on equal opportunities, what we now call equality and diversity. I pointed out that every one of us has prejudices and is prone to making statements that are formed by unconscious biases. If someone annoys us we pick on the characteristic that makes them different to us as the reason why they have annoyed us.

Don’t believe me? If a driver of a different gender cuts you up on the motorway, the chances are that you will describe them with a negative gender-based stereotype.

Well, I did not imagine the level of negative feedback I would get when I raised the issue of unconscious bias. No one wanted to admit that they could be capable of behaving in such a way.

The important thing to remember is that unconscious bias is a natural process, and something that our ancestors learnt back in the fight or flight days. The brain is programmes to consume information and to use shortcuts based on experience to make decisions quickly. Our unconscious bias is a by-product of this process. We can’t change it, we just have to be aware of how it impacts our decision making.

You can find out more about unconscious bias and how to make other people more aware of their own unconscious biases at this link