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REFLECTIVE JOURNALING 3
LIBERTY UNIVERSITY
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According to Webster a bias is prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or
group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair. In life we deal with
biases in some form weekly or in fact daily. However, in communication biased listening is very
familiar. Our listening can be blocked because of a negative experience we had with a person we
are communicating with. We can often negative past experiences dictate our present situation.
Those negative past experiences are held subconsciously in our head (Burley-Allen, 1995 p.55).
One of my beliefs is that individuals listen to reply to person, they are communicating with
instead of listening to understand the person.
I can recall working with an inmate who was always recurring infractions for
masturbation or exposing himself to female officers. He would always be found guilty of that
infraction and we would place him in restrictive housing for 15- 30 days before releasing him
back to regular population. Then two or three months later, he would be back to his previous
behavior. My gut feeling was telling me not to take the time to see what was the problem with
the inmate because his actions was so disrespectful. However, after talking with inmate, he
didn’t see his actions was wrong until I asked him who was important to him? He said his young
niece. I asked him, what if that was your niece and another inmate was masturbation or
exposing himself to her. He said I would go off if someone did my niece like that. I then told him
every time you do that to a female officers think of somebody doing that to your niece. He told
me he never looked at it in that way. After that day I haven’t heard of him doing that to another
female officer. The inmate was extremely happy to have a “listening ear” and to have someone
help him look at the situation differently. Our job is not to judge but to show compassion and
understanding, care and concern for our clients, regardless of what they have done or who they
are. If we can’t, we are obligated to refer the client to someone who can work with them
without prejudice (Ethical standards for HS, 2010).
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James 1:19, Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak,
slow to anger.
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References
Burley-Allen, M. (1995). Listening: The forgotten skill: A self-teaching guide (2nd ed.). New York,
NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Ethical standards for human service professionals. (2010). Journal of Human Services, 30(1),
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