We examine whether rigid processes protect us from risk or trap us in a cage, drawing on Ioannis Nousis’s argument that unprecedented problems require intuition over structure. We also confront the industry’s ethical fractures, from the bleak reality of labor shifts at the NYC Future of Design conference to the plagiarism and ghosting that erode trust among practitioners. This episode asks if we can design our way out of structural issues when the very frameworks we rely on fail to protect integrity or respect.