Unit 8 · Ethics, Complexity & Wicked Problems · Lesson 36
The Wicked Problem
When solutions create the next problem
By the end of this lesson
You'll be able to:
- tell a wicked problem apart from a hard-but-tame one, in one clean sentence
- name the technical, ethical and political layers of a public issue without confusing them
- use systems vocabulary (feedback loops, lock-in, second-order effects) without sounding like a textbook
- resist the urge to solve a wicked problem in the first ten minutes of talking about it
Stage 1
Get Talking
Here's what you'll do
Four public issues on the table. Which ones are wicked, which are just hard?
You produce
You classify each and defend your call in one sentence.
- Repairing the potholes in a European capital after a cold winter.
- Deciding what your national health service will and will not pay for over the next decade.
- Rolling out AI tools inside secondary schools in the next three years.
- Getting a delayed cross-Channel train service back on schedule tomorrow morning.
Your notes
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, one person defends a call and the other has to steelman the opposite classification.
Stage 2
Notice the language
Here's what you'll do
The vocabulary you need to talk about problems that don't sit still.
You produce
You label the four layers in a live case.
Wicked-problem vocabulary: layers, loops, lock-in, second-order effects
A tame problem has a stable definition, a right answer and a moment when you know it's finished. Fixing a pothole is tame. A wicked problem is the opposite: the definition keeps moving, the 'solution' creates the next problem, and there is no moment where a reasonable person can say 'we're done'. Trying to talk about the second kind in the language of the first is the single most common failure in public conversation.
Examples
- Layer'That's not a technical objection, it's an ethical one — and I think you're right on the ethics.'
- Loop'The more we publish league tables, the more schools optimise for them, and the less the tables measure what we care about.'
- Lock-in'Once the pension formula is written into law, changing it is a twenty-year project, not a five-year one.'
- Second-order'Yes, the tax cut worked as intended. The second-order effect is what nobody costed — a hollowed-out inspector cadre by year four.'
Quick rule
Four moves at C2: (a) LAYER — name whether you're arguing about the TECHNICAL layer (what would work), the ETHICAL layer (what's right), or the POLITICAL layer (what can pass) — mixing them is how public debates go nowhere; (b) LOOP — say when a proposed fix creates a FEEDBACK LOOP that strengthens the problem ('teaching to the test' feeding back into a testing-obsessed system); (c) LOCK-IN — name the point at which a choice becomes structurally hard to reverse ('once the standard is set, everyone builds against it'); (d) SECOND-ORDER — name the effect that shows up only after the first-order fix ('congestion charges cut traffic, and then house prices in the zone rise').
Try three
1. Layer-label: 'We can't afford it' in a debate on funding social care.
Reveal
Political, dressed as technical. Fiscal capacity is a political choice about tax base; calling it 'affordability' hides that.
2. Name the loop: publishing hospital mortality rates by surgeon.
Reveal
Surgeons decline the sickest patients to protect their score; overall system mortality rises even as individual scores improve.
3. Name the lock-in: choosing one national digital-ID vendor for the next decade.
Reveal
Every downstream service integrates with that vendor's API; switching cost after year three is essentially prohibitive.
Stage 3
Vocabulary in action
Here's what you'll do
Ten items for talking about the hard ones.
You produce
You use each in a live sentence about a case on the table.
an issue whose definition keeps shifting and where every 'solution' creates the next problem
"Climate adaptation is a wicked problem — there is no version where you finish."
an issue with a stable definition and a knowable right answer
"Fixing the printer is tame. Deciding what students should learn is not."
the part of an argument about what would actually work
"Let's separate the technical layer from the political one before we go any further."
the part of an argument about what is right, independent of feasibility
"That's an ethical objection, and pretending it's technical is dishonest."
the part of an argument about what a real coalition can be built for
"It's the right policy on the ethics and the numbers — and it will never pass on the political layer."
a cycle in which a fix strengthens the very thing it was meant to reduce
"That's a feedback loop, not a solution — every league table makes the teaching worse."
the point at which a choice becomes structurally hard to reverse
"There's a five-year window before this decision hits lock-in."
a downstream consequence that only shows up after the first-order fix has landed
"Nobody costed the second-order effect on rents inside the zone."
to declare a wicked problem solved after solving only the tame part of it
"That report premature-closes. The technical fix worked; the wicked problem is untouched."
to keep the definition of a wicked problem in play instead of resolving it too fast
"For now, hold the problem open. Don't pick a lane in the first ten minutes."
Guided practice
1. Fill: 'That's an ____ objection, not a technical one.' (1 word)
Reveal
ethical
2. Fill: 'There's a five-year window before this hits ____.' (1 word)
Reveal
lock-in
3. Fill: 'For now, ____ the problem open.' (1 word)
Reveal
hold
Stage 4
Speaking Task
Here's what you'll do
Case-study round: three real public issues, three layer-diagnoses.
You produce
Three 3-minute diagnoses in a row, each ending on 'and here's what I refuse to conclude'.
Teacher gives you three cases (e.g. AI in state schools, the housing crisis in a named city, a national organ-donation opt-out policy). For each, in 3 minutes:
- aclassify wicked vs tame
- bname the technical, ethical and political layers cleanly
- cpoint to one feedback loop or lock-in that a naïve fix would trigger
- dfinish with one sentence beginning ‘and here’s what I refuse to conclude in ten minutes‘. You may not use ’the solution is'.
Use these
Prompts
- · Case A: rolling out generative AI in secondary schools by 2028.
- · Case B: the housing crisis in the city you know best.
- · Case C: making organ donation opt-out rather than opt-in.
Your speaking notes
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, the listener holds up a red card the moment the speaker slides between layers without naming the shift.
Stage 5
Read or listen
Here's what you'll do
One case memo. Read as a diagnostician, not a policymaker.
You produce
Five close-reading calls on where the memo confuses layers or premature-closes.
Reading — Memo — congestion charging in a mid-sized European capital, three years on
TO: The Deputy Mayor, Transport
FROM: Head of Analytics
RE: Central Zone Charge — three-year review
1. Headline. Since introduction, traffic entering the Central Zone during charged hours is down 34%. Air-quality readings at the six monitored junctions have improved. Bus journey times inside the zone are down 11%. On the technical layer, the policy has done what it was designed to do.
2. What we did not design for. Median rents inside the zone are up 22% in the same period, against a citywide increase of 9%. Two primary schools inside the zone have lost roll numbers of 40% and 31% respectively — the families who left the zone were disproportionately the ones the charge was hardest on. The retail mix has shifted: independent grocers are down 28% in count; delivery-warehousing units have doubled.
3. The layer confusion. Public conversation about the charge has treated the emissions data as the answer to every question asked of it. It is not. The emissions data speaks to the technical layer only. Rent, roll, retail and the geography of who now lives inside a cleaner-air zone are ethical and political questions, and they are not answered by the fact that the technical objective was met.
4. What we would recommend before renewal. (a) Publish a companion dataset on displacement, priced and mapped, with the emissions dataset. (b) Do not renew the charge without a dated review of the exemption schedule (currently blue-badge and residents only); the case for a means-tested residents' exemption is now stronger than it was in year one. (c) Resist the framing, in the renewal debate, that a critic of the charge is a critic of clean air. That framing is a category error and it will cost the eventual policy its legitimacy.
5. What we would not recommend. We would not recommend abolition. The technical case for the charge has strengthened, not weakened, in three years. We would recommend renewal on terms that admit publicly what the first three years also cost — and to whom.
Comprehension
1. Where does the memo distinguish the TECHNICAL layer from the ETHICAL and POLITICAL layers?
Reveal
Paragraph 3 explicitly. 'The emissions data speaks to the technical layer only. Rent, roll, retail and the geography of who now lives inside a cleaner-air zone are ethical and political questions.' Paragraph 1 is the technical layer; paragraph 2 is the raw material for the ethical/political case.
2. Name TWO second-order effects the memo documents.
Reveal
Rent inside the zone up 22% against a 9% citywide baseline (displacement); and the retail-mix shift — independent grocers down 28%, delivery warehousing doubled. Both were downstream of a policy aimed at emissions, not housing or retail.
3. Where does the memo resist a PREMATURE-CLOSE?
Reveal
Paragraph 3 refuses to let 'emissions improved' answer 'was it a good policy'. Paragraph 4(c) refuses the frame 'critic of charge = critic of clean air'. Paragraph 5 refuses abolition, so it doesn't premature-close in the opposite direction either.
4. What LOCK-IN does the exemption schedule now represent?
Reveal
By year three, the delivery-warehousing sector has doubled around the current exemption schedule. Any change to exemptions now hits a supplier base that has been built against the existing rules. The longer the current schedule stands, the harder means-testing residents' exemptions gets.
5. What is the memo modelling about how to write on a wicked problem?
Reveal
It admits what the policy cost and to whom, without conceding the policy. It separates the layers by name. It refuses both the celebration frame ('emissions down, we're done') and the abolition frame ('displacement up, tear it down'). It writes to hold the problem open through renewal, not to declare it solved.
Stage 6
Look closer
Here's what you'll do
Rewrite paragraph 3 for a hostile audience.
You produce
A rewrite of one paragraph plus a 60-word note on what you kept and what you cut.
Rewrite paragraph 3 of the memo TWICE. Version A: for a residents' association inside the zone whose members feel priced out. Version B: for a chamber of commerce that has lobbied to abolish the charge. In both, you must keep the LAYER distinction intact — you may not collapse the ethical/political case into the emissions data or vice versa. Then, in 60 words: name what you kept in both versions and what you cut from each, and why.
- · Which single sentence in the memo would you cut if you had to lose one?
- · Which sentence is doing the most POLITICAL work — protecting the eventual renewal debate?
- · Where does the memo risk sounding like a lecture rather than a diagnosis?
Your analysis
Group extension (optional)
In pairs, swap the two rewrites. Mark the moment where each version stops sounding neutral and starts sounding like an ally.
Stage 7
Communication Challenge
Here's what you'll do
Chair the layer-triage: a 15-minute case-study meeting on a wicked problem you brought.
You produce
A 15-minute chaired conversation with layer-tags called live and a one-page diagnosis at the end.
You bring the wicked problem you prepared for homework (AI in schools / climate adaptation / an ethical question in your own industry). Teacher plays two counterparties who each want to close the problem in ten minutes and each in a different direction. Your job as chair:
- atag every contribution TECHNICAL / ETHICAL / POLITICAL out loud
- bname at least one FEEDBACK LOOP and one LOCK-IN in the room
- crefuse at least one PREMATURE-CLOSE by name
- dclose the meeting on a one-page diagnosis that HOLDS THE PROBLEM OPEN into the next meeting.
Timing
3 minutes for you to brief the case; 12 minutes for the chaired conversation; the one-page diagnosis is drafted live in the last 3 minutes.
Use these
Deliverable
The one-page diagnosis: three layers named, one loop, one lock-in, one thing you refused to conclude today.
Your deliverable / notes
Group extension (optional)
In groups of 3, one chairs and two play the closers. The scorer counts every un-tagged layer slide.
Stage 8
Exam Connection
Here's what you'll do
C2 Proficiency Speaking Part 3 — the collaborative decision task.
You produce
A 90-second layer-tagged opening for a Part 3-style prompt.
C2 Proficiency — Speaking Part 3 (extended candidate-to-candidate discussion around a visual/prompt board)
Task
Examiners reward candidates who structure the task rather than list opinions. Layer-tagging is exactly this: naming out loud whether a point is technical, ethical or political turns a scattered chat into a visibly organised discussion.
Strategy
Open Part 3 not with a preference but with a frame. ‘Before we pick, I think we’re actually looking at two different kinds of question here — the technical one is X, the political one is Y. I‘d like to take them in that order.’ Examiners hear that as C2 organisation, and it also buys you thinking time.
Mini-task
Take a Part 3-style prompt board (real or invented — ‘How can a city best reduce loneliness among older residents?’). Deliver a 90-second opening that layer-tags at least two of the five prompts before offering any preference of your own.
Your mini-task answer
Stage 9
Writing
Here's what you'll do
One 260-word diagnostic memo on the wicked problem you brought today.
You produce
The memo handed in with a 40-word 'what I refused to conclude' postscript.
Write a 260-word diagnostic memo (not a proposal) on the wicked problem you brought. The memo MUST:
- aclassify the problem wicked vs tame in one sentence
- bseparate the technical, ethical and political layers in three short numbered paragraphs
- cname at least one FEEDBACK LOOP or LOCK-IN
- dname at least one SECOND-ORDER effect a naïve fix would trigger
- eend on a ‘what I refuse to conclude in the next ten minutes’ line. Use at least SEVEN target items naturally. Do not offer a solution.
Word count: 260 words + 40-word postscript
Must use
Your writing (autosaved draft)
Stage 10
Reflect & take home
Here's what you'll do
End of L36. Two questions, one prep.
You produce
Spoken 30-second reflection + prep for L37.
Reflection
- · When was the last time you watched a public argument collapse because the speakers were on different layers without knowing it?
- · Where in your own life or work are you currently trying to close a wicked problem inside ten minutes?
Homework
For L37 (Ethics in Public): pick ONE public ethical question where a serious person you respect holds a view you find hard. Bring:
- athe question in one line
- bthe strongest sentence you can write in that person's voice defending their view
- cthe sentence in your own view they would find hardest to argue with.
Your reflection
How confident do you feel with this?
Homework response
Need more practice with this language?
Extra Practice