Liberalism is the research name for the Openness facet that describes a person's relationship with convention, and despite the name, it has nothing to do with politics. Toward the "challenges convention" end, it drives a person to question established ways of doing things, not out of contrarianism but out of a genuine belief that most systems can be improved. At work, this is the colleague who asks "why do we do it this way?" in the meeting where everyone else has already moved on, and it is one of the most misunderstood personality signals in any organization.
- Liberalism is one of six Openness facets, running from "respects convention" to "challenges convention," and it is distinct from the idea-generation most people associate with the trait.
- Despite the name, it is about a person's relationship to convention, not their political beliefs or general attitude toward authority.
- Colleagues toward the "challenges convention" end are frequently mislabeled as difficult or insubordinate.
- Their questions are often the earliest available signal of institutional drift, long before it shows up in performance data.
- The fix is a structured venue for the questioning, not a request to stop asking.
What Is Liberalism, and How Is It Different from Being Contrarian?
Liberalism is a facet of Openness to Experience, and its research name is misleading: it has nothing to do with politics, and someone at either end of it could vote any way at all. It describes how readily a person questions existing processes, decisions, and hierarchies. Toward the "challenges convention" end, that questioning is driven by a belief that asking "why do we do it this way" is always a legitimate question. It is not the same as contrarianism, which pushes back reflexively regardless of merit. A convention-challenging colleague isn't trying to win an argument. They are running a continuous audit of whether the system in front of them still makes sense. Toward the "respects convention" end, people trust that most rules exist for a reason and put their energy into executing well within the system, which is much of what keeps a well-run organization running smoothly. The Big 5 at Work assessment doesn't score Liberalism, but it's worth understanding, because it explains a good deal of the friction you'll see at work.
This is a different mechanism than the imagination or adventurousness facets of Openness, which generate new ideas or push people toward untested territory. Liberalism aims inward, at what already exists. It asks whether the policy that made sense five years ago still earns its place on the org chart today.
Why Do Colleagues Who Challenge Convention Get Labeled "Insubordinate"?
In hierarchical organizations, the person willing to push back on a decision made by someone with more authority is frequently read as disrespectful, even when their objection is accurate and well-reasoned. The friction isn't really about the content of their question. It's about the fact that most workplace cultures treat "who said it" as more relevant than "is it right," and a convention-challenging colleague hasn't internalized that hierarchy the way the culture expects.
Is this the same thing as being a "problem employee"?
No. A problem employee resists direction regardless of whether it's sound. A convention-challenging colleague resists direction specifically when they see a gap between the stated goal and the actual policy, and they can usually articulate that gap in detail if given the room to. The two get confused constantly, and the cost of that confusion is real: teams that punish the questioning eventually lose the questioners, and with them, the earliest warning system the organization had.
How Do You Tell the Difference Between Genuine Institutional Drift and Ordinary Complaining?
Institutional drift is what happens when a policy, process, or structure keeps running long after the conditions that justified it have changed, simply because nobody has revisited it. A colleague toward the "challenges convention" end is often the first person in the room to notice it, because their default posture is to ask why a rule exists rather than assume it must be there for a reason.
The practical test isn't tone, it's specificity. Ordinary complaining stays vague — "this process is annoying." A genuine drift signal names the original condition, notes that it's gone, and proposes what should replace it. If your colleague can answer "what changed since this rule was written," you're looking at signal, not noise.
How Should Leaders Respond When Someone Keeps Asking "Why Do We Do It This Way?"
Christin Camacho's "Two Things Are True" method, from her book Why You Need Neurotic People on Your Team, gives that conversation a structure in three steps. First, name something true that honors the other person's reality: what their question is protecting, and where they're right. Second, name the Objective Constraints, the facts of the situation that both of you have to work within, such as a deadline, a budget, a client requirement, or a specific risk. Third, work out the resolution together. It might sound like this: "Two things are true here. You're right that this approval step was built for a compliance rule that changed two years ago, and it's adding days to every request. And the auditors are reviewing this exact process, as it's currently written, until the audit closes on the 30th. Can we draft the new version together now, so it's ready to go the week the audit closes?" The question gets a real answer, the constraint is a fact rather than a competing opinion, and the leader doesn't have to choose between the person and the deadline.
The concrete move is to give the questioning a designated channel instead of leaving it to surface unpredictably in status meetings. A standing "why do we still do this" slot in a quarterly review, or a rotating devil's advocate assignment on a specific initiative, turns a trait that reads as friction into a formal function the team can rely on. The person doesn't stop asking. The organization just stops being surprised by it.
Frequently Asked Questions About Liberalism at Work
Is Liberalism the same as low Agreeableness? No. Agreeableness governs how much someone prioritizes harmony over conflict; Liberalism, a facet of Openness, governs how much someone questions convention. A person can be warm and easy to work with while still reliably asking "why do we do it this way," or be blunt while rarely questioning existing systems at all.
Can Liberalism be developed, or is it fixed? Like the other Big Five facets, it's a fairly stable tendency through adulthood, so one workshop won't change it much, though it can still shift slowly over time. What's trainable isn't the underlying orientation — it's how skillfully someone frames the challenge so it lands as useful rather than combative.
What's the risk of having no one toward the "challenges convention" end on a team? Without it, teams tend to keep running processes well past their useful life, because no one is structurally inclined to ask whether the original justification still holds. The absence is quiet, which is exactly what makes it expensive.
How do I know if I sit toward the "challenges convention" end myself? If you regularly find yourself the person in the room still asking "wait, why do we do it this way" after a decision has effectively been made, and you notice colleagues sometimes read that as pushback rather than curiosity, that's a strong indicator. The Big 5 at Work assessment doesn't score Liberalism, but the free assessment linked below will show you where you fall on Openness, the trait this facet belongs to, along with the other four traits.
Should an employee who challenges convention always be given final say? No — their questions are a valuable input, not an automatic veto. The goal is a defined venue where the challenge gets heard and weighed, not a system where the loudest question always wins.
Related Reading
- Adventurousness at Work: Why Your Most Adventurous Employee Might Quit a Job That's Going Fine
- Emotionality at Work: Why Some Colleagues Sense a Culture Shift Before the Data Does
- What Is the NEO PI-R, and Why Does Big 5 at Work Use the Public-Domain IPIP-NEO Instead?
Christin Camacho is the author of Why You Need Neurotic People on Your Team and the creator of the Big 5 at Work framework. Curious where you and your team land on Openness and the other four traits? Take the free assessment at big5atwork.com/quiz; the full report breaks each trait into facets like Imagination and Adventurousness.
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