BLOOMBERG LAW — A recent study by consulting firm Russell Reynolds Associates found that more than half of Fortune 500 companies employ a chief diversity officer—a position that LinkedIn has described as the “job of the moment.” After the murder of George Floyd in 2020 by a police officer, the pace only accelerated, with the hiring of new diversity chiefs in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index almost tripling. Across corporate America, including the legal profession where I work, leaders have engaged in one conversation after another about diversity. This should give us hope. Except most of those conversations have either been bouquets thrown at some new program or lamentations about the tortoise-like progress of an industry or organization. Few touch directly on the hard issues—the assumptions and biases that continue to stand in our way. I have learned many lessons as I have tried to confront those hard issues and illuminate blind spots. Three lessons in particular may be useful for getting us on the path to real progress.