A diversity consultant, Howard Ross, with more than 30 years’ experience is at the airport, ready to board a New York flight to his next client. While he’s waiting at the gate, the attendant announces that there’s a 45-minute delay for the flight. A man behind him bellows, “are you talking to us, lady?” Ross turns around to look at the man. He describes him as, “Santa Claus, with a bad attitude.”

The man is white, in his mid-sixties, wearing overalls and a flannel shirt and is holding a car magazine in his hand. Ross thinks to himself, ‘boy, do I have him pegged,’ and goes back to work.

They eventually board the plane and Ross is surprised to see that the man is sitting next to him in first class. Ross politely nods to him and sits down, taking out his laptop to do some work.

Later, when the pilot announces their final descent, Ross asks, “what do you do?” The man replies, “I’m a radiologist.” Ross is taken aback. He had pegged this man as anything but a doctor. It gets worse. “Do you have a particular interest in radiology?” Ross asks. The man becomes excited. “Yes, we’re using active brain scans to learn about how the human brain responds to various stimuli, especially when people interact with different kinds of people.” Ross is shocked. This is the field that he’s interested in. He realises that he missed the opportunity to learn more in the past two hours about the brain from this man than he has in the last year – all because he had allowed his biases to influence his thinking.