Entrepreneur and author Margaret Heffernan argues that organisations and individuals can become better leaders by facing up to the truth and by managing their strategies around the truth. In one of a series of festival debates around leadership, she discusses the concept of ‘willful blindness’. She looks at what makes humans prone to ‘willful blindness’ – the failure to observe or find out what is really going on – and suggests ways in which individuals and organsations can combat it.

Heffernan’s CV includes spells writing and producing for BBC Radio, as a television producer for Timewatch, Arena and Newsnight, running leading Internet businesses and as a writer.