Before You Ask Who’s Qualified, Ask Who Had a Chance to Be Seen
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There’s a conversation I had recently that has stayed with me.
Someone I know shared that a loved one had been detained by ICE. There was no time to prepare, no clear next step. It was just a sudden shift that changed everything for their family. As they were talking, I found myself sitting with the weight of what that kind of disruption actually means. Not just emotionally, but practically. What happens to someone’s ability to show up to work, to think clearly, to plan ahead, when stability is taken away overnight?
I wasn’t thinking about policy or politics at that moment. I was thinking about how fragile access to opportunity can be, and how quickly it can change.
And it made me realize how little we talk about that reality in the workplace.
We talk a lot about merit. We ask who is qualified, who is ready, and who deserves the opportunity. But we don’t always ask a more foundational question: who actually had a chance to be seen?
Before someone is evaluated, they have to be visible. Before they are considered qualified, they have to be considered at all. And that’s where the conversation around merit becomes incomplete.
We often treat merit as if it is objective and consistent. But in reality, merit is something we interpret, and what we see is shaped by the systems we’ve built and the assumptions we carry. If certain people are less visible, less heard, or less likely to be given the benefit of the doubt, then what we are calling merit is already filtered.
That’s not a reflection of talent. It’s a reflection of access.
And access has never been evenly distributed.
At the same time, we are living in a moment where identity is evolving. The way people understand and express race, gender, and orientation is becoming more fluid and expansive. Yet many of our workplace systems remain rigid. Our definitions of professionalism, leadership, and “fit” are still rooted in older norms that don’t reflect the full range of who people are today.
So we end up with a disconnect. People are evolving, but systems are not. And when systems don’t evolve, they don’t just stay the same. They continue to produce the same outcomes.
This is where I think the DEI conversation has lost clarity.
We have spent a lot of time talking about fairness. But fairness assumes that everyone is starting from the same place. It assumes equal access, equal visibility, and equal opportunity to be evaluated. That assumption does not hold up when we look at how decisions are actually made.
What we should be paying closer attention to is bias, access, and visibility. These are the factors that shape outcomes long before a hiring or promotion decision takes place.
Right now, we are also seeing a shift in how organizations approach this work. In some cases, DEI is being reframed. In others, it is being quietly deprioritized. There is concern about backlash, about perception, and about how this work is received. But changing the language does not change the underlying patterns.
It does not change who gets seen.
It does not change who gets access.
It does not change how decisions are made.
So the real question isn’t whether we call it DEI or something else. The question is whether we are actually identifying the most qualified people, or simply the most visible ones.
Because if visibility is uneven, then opportunity will be uneven as well.
And that brings us back to merit.
You cannot claim merit-based hiring if bias determines who gets seen in the first place. That is not a philosophical argument. It is a structural reality.
This is also where equity becomes essential. Equity is not about giving someone an advantage. It is about removing the distortion that prevents us from making clear, accurate decisions. It is about designing systems that allow us to identify talent based on capability, not familiarity.
When we do that well, we are not lowering standards. We are strengthening them.
And more importantly, we are creating workplaces that are better equipped to recognize, develop, and retain the full range of talent available to them.
Before we ask who is qualified, we have to be willing to examine who had the opportunity to be seen.
Because if we get that part wrong, everything that follows will be off.
