Confirmation bias has to be one of the most pervasive – and shittiest – aspects of human nature. By definition, it’s our natural tendency to only search for information that conforms to our preconceptions. In other words, we are naturally disposed to seeing only what we want to see.

And it’s all around us. You don’t like someone? You’ll only see their bad points. You had a bad meal in a restaurant? The service will be bad too, and they left a stain on the tablecloth. The wrong party got into power? Look at the mess they created.

If you have a vested interest in anything it’s likely that the gales of confirmation bias will roar around you. If you’re selling or promoting something it’s likely you’ll jump with delight on information that could promote your business. You’ll jump with annoyance, though, on any statement to the contrary. The same goes for fossil fuels, quack autism cures, homeopathy, fortune telling, you name it.

I want to take the German refugee crisis as an example, because I’m currently stuck in a debate about it. Because of the devastation of Syria and Iraq, tens of thousands of refugees are arriving in Germany each week. A million people could come there in the coming months. This is undoubtedly going to put stress on everything: schools, housing, hospitals, social services and policing. It wouldn’t matter where the people came from or what their religion was: a million people arriving from anywhere would pose big problems to residents.

Many locals are less than happy. Listening to them I get the impression that the refugees are the worst people imaginable. A lot of the arguments hinge around stories of criminality or personal affronts. Sheep getting stolen, youths going to the toilet on doorsteps, local women being insulted as whores, that kind of thing. Terrible stuff indeed.

But here are a couple of things that make me pause.

First, are all the stories true? When hearing stories that we badly want to hear, our critical faculties often disappear. The statement itself is proof enough. Because it conforms with what we already believe, why be sceptical about it?

Second, what about the disconfirming stories? The stories of immigrants or refugees doing nothing of the sort? Of minding their own business? Of doing something nice for other people? You won’t hear many of these because nobody wants to talk about them. Nobody likes a good story ruined.

Third, in what way does a story like this extrapolate out to the wider community? You will find criminality everywhere and desperation may provoke additional anti-social behaviour amongst some people. Even still, lots of stories like this are unlikely to be indicative of a mass movement of people, hell-bent on exploiting their hosts.

Fourth, because these people are escaping a bad situation, doesn’t necessarily mean that the badness is coming with them. If they loved the awfulness of ISIS and government terrorism so much, then why are they leaving in such numbers?

Now, it’s quite possible that it’s me who is biased, that it’s me who is giving the refugees far too much credit and that I am not considering the genuine problems of local residents. Maybe I’ve become too leftie for my own good and it’s addled my brain. It could be. After all, I’m just as susceptible to confirmation bias as anyone else. However my experience is that most people are basically decent. They are more interested in washing machines and putting food on the table than they are about forcing others to conform to their way of thinking. Kids tend to behave like kids everywhere and while it’s more complicated with adults, it’s the complications that make it such a muddy picture. There are good people and bad people and every shade in between. If we ignore all this variety in order to adopt a convenient fantasy that they are all the same, we take steps down some very, very dark pathways. Perhaps that’s just wishy, washy, liberal me talking.

Without much doubt, the Volkswagen emissions story is one of the greatestl corporate disasters in recent decades. As a proud VW owner, I’m shocked that a company of its size and reputation would have ever allowed itself to get into so much trouble.

The highly abridged story is as follows. An independent test revealed that some VW diesel cars contained software designed to trick emissions testers. If the software noticed that the car was undergoing an emissions test, it would change the engine settings to reduce nitrogen oxide output to the lowest possible level, thus tricking the testers. When the car was allowed back on the road, the engine settings would be reset, allowing emissions – up to 40 times higher than legally permitted – to be released. VW put code into their cars that was deliberately designed to break US environmental laws. It also breaches environmental regulations in many other countries. Up to 11 million cars are affected and we are awaiting news on exactly what these cars are.

It was a monumentally audacious trick. It’s beyond me how, with 11 million affected cars on the road, they didn’t imagine they would eventually be found out. Now that the fraud is in the open, VW face massive lawsuits from a whole raft of countries. They cannot sell any more diesel cars in the US – both for this year and next year. Switzerland has banned the sale of further diesel cars. Presumably more countries will follow. All owners of affected cars may be compelled to return their cars to their dealers, so that a software fix can be applied to the cars. If the cars are not as powerful after the remedial fix or if taxes are increased for these models, VW face massive class action lawsuits from millions of annoyed drivers around the world. VW’s reputation – indeed the reputation of the German motor industry – is badly tarnished, resulting in enormous job losses down the line. This may spell the end of diesel cars. People with breathing difficulties, such as cystic fibrosis or asthma, may well be encouraged to sue Volkwagen for putting their lives in danger.

Given the implications as described above, I cannot understand how VW’s legal team would ever countenance such a thing. Their job is to protect the company under all circumstances. Permitting such a fix to go through would have been idiocy of the highest level. My assumption, at this time, is that they simply didn’t know, which should imply that the CEO did not know either. However the same cannot be said for their head of engineering. To pull off this massive fraud, somebody wrote the code, other people tested the code and yet other people signed off on the code. Testing must have been quite sophisticated to ensure it worked in real world conditions, so we are talking about a lot of engineers and a considerable enough budget to pay for all this.

For this reason, I do not believe this was a massive conspiracy orchestrated from the top of VW. You could of course argue that “everybody is doing it” as an incentive to commit the fraud, but so far it appears that just one engine produced by Volkwagen is affected. It looks like a solo run by someone in engineering – someone far too clever for their own good. Whoever dreamed it up, signed up to this scheme or attempted to cover it up should face criminal charges.

Despite the bad news, there is a silver lining. Ironically this could be the best thing to happen to international business culture in quite a while. The incident means that corporations need to double down on their business conduct policies. No matter how good any corporation perceives itself to be, this story shows that a small number of people can do irreparable damage to the entire enterprise in pursuit of short term profitability objectives. It also perhaps signals a concerted move towards cleaner technologies. In the medium term, testing of diesel cars will be revamped. There have been significant issues with these tests for years, with the industry arguing vociferously against more regulation. They have now lost this argument. In a year or two, all diesel cars will be subjected to a far more stringent regime. This is good for all of us. In the longer term, it is likely that diesel will diminish in importance, though it could be argued that electric vehicles cannot match the power and durability of diesel engines. Either way, it will signal a major change in the industry.

Whatever the outcome, plenty of lessons have been learned.