Since major tech players like Google and Facebook came out with their lackluster diversity figures last summer, tech companies big and small have started paying more attention to the industry’s diversity problem, emphasizing meritocracy when it comes to hiring and promoting.

That there is a problem is undeniable, but it turns out all that lip service about cultural change might actually have an inverse effect. Researchers from MIT and Indiana University call this the “paradox of meritocracy.” They found that managers in organizations emphasizing meritocracy as part of their company culture actually showed greater bias against women in their performance evaluations and rewards.

The paradox of meritocracy: Managers in organizations emphasizing meritocracy as part of their company culture actually showed greater bias against women in their performance evaluations and rewards.

Rather than try to teach employees and managers to change unconscious behaviors, a better solution to the challenge of hiring bias, says Joan Williams, a law professor and founder of the Center For WorkLife Law at the University of California, Hastings, is to intentionally interrupt biases. “When an organization lacks diversity, it’s not the employees who need fixing,” writes Williams in Harvard Business Review. “It’s the business systems.”

One startup, GapJumpers, has drawn inspiration from an unlikely place in its efforts to create a solution to the hiring problem at tech companies: reality TV, specifically the NBC singing competition, The Voice. The show, whose premise originated in Holland, uses blind auditions in which a panel of judges–the likes of which include Christina Aguilera and Pharrell–keep their backs turned to contestants while hearing them sing for the first time. “The Voice is a very good analogy to clearly explain the impact of blind auditions for actual hiring,” says Kedar Iyer, cofounder and CEO of GapJumpers, and, not surprisingly, a fan of The Voice. “If one industry, especially a shallow one like the music industry, can do [blind auditions], why can’t tech companies, which are so much more scientific, do them?”

When an organization lacks diversity, it’s not the employees who need fixing.

Of course the impact of blind auditions on eliminating bias isn’t unique to The Voice Research by the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford revealed that orchestras increased their number of women musicians from 5% to 25% since the 1970s because of one simple change. Judges began auditioning musicians behind screens so that they could not see them. Simply knowing a candidate was a man had automatically upped that man’s chances of being selected.