A couple of months back I was sitting with a developer at work, and I asked her if there was anything that I did, said, or suggested that made her feel uncomfortable as a woman.

I don’t know why I asked at that particular moment. I think we were talking about her being a female developer in a company where the ratio of male-to-female developers is something like 70-30.

I was honestly expecting to hear her say that I wasn’t part of the problem. But she didn’t say that.

She told me that I sometimes asked the other (male) developer on the team about tasks that she was exclusively working on and that she felt offended that I would defer to him just because he was the male developer.

I was taken aback and did what came naturally—I went on the defensive.

I implied was that it was her that took it the wrong way and that it was her perception of the interactions. In other words, it was her issue, not mine.

That kind of victim-blaming response is similar to what I sometimes hear from male (and female) friends when I call them out for saying things like “if a woman doesn’t want to be looked at as an object, she shouldn’t dress like that.”

As a father of two girls heading quickly towards their teens, you would think I’d have known better by now. Evidently not.

The key realization was this—the way I interacted with her caused her to feel slighted. I caused it, and so it was up to me to correct it.

Duh.

There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them—Denis Waitley

Because I truly believe that this is my problem to solve, I’m resisting the urge to provide advice to you. Instead I’ll share a couple of quick points from my experience in the hopes that you’ll be able to better understand where I’m coming from.

First, it can be a scary thing to consider sitting down with a female colleague to ask the question, “Is there anything that I do that makes you feel uncomfortable as a woman?

Knowing what I know now, I consider it much more frightening to consider leaving the question unasked.

While I didn’t (and don’t) expect there to be a huge problem in our office, it is worth considering that our work environment might be uncomfortable at best and threatening at worst. Either has the real potential to inflict ongoing damage to productivity, and to the quality of work that our team is trying to do.

Second, the biggest thing I learned is how to ask for (and then accept) criticism. I made a huge mistake when I did this the first time. I should have just listened to what was shared and not interrupted to try to explain or justify my actions.

To make sure I don’t do that again, I’ve practiced my response and it’s this: “I’m sorry I made you feel that way.”

Those words were very carefully chosen. Saying “I’m sorry you feel that way” is not nearly the same. The first one takes responsibility for causing hurt. The second one assigns away the blame.

Third, I plan to have the same conversation with other women in our company over the next little bit and I’ll continue to ask the question again, and again as time goes on.

I hope that these conversations will get easier and shorter, but also more frequent. I also believe that as trust builds, I won’t have to ask as often and the feedback will be offered because my co-workers will know the reaction will be positive and worthwhile.

Lastly, without action, an apology is hollow. It will take practice, but I’ll accept the criticism, apologize and most importantly, resolve to improve.

I’m doing all this because it’s my problem to solve.