Researchers Dana, Weber and Kuang ran an experiment where people could choose whether to learn how their decision affected someone else, and roughly half chose not to find out.
What the research actually found
The study is one of the founding pieces of research on what economists now call strategic ignorance, choosing not to receive information specifically because receiving it would create an obligation you would rather not have. The people who avoided the information were not being careless. They were making a documented, deliberate choice about when information becomes theirs to hold, and what holding it would cost them.
Where this applies at work
A premature briefing on a decision that has not been finalized. An early heads up about a reorganization you cannot act on yet. Information that would only put you in an impossible position, forced to either act on something not yet real or sit on it while pretending you do not know. Declining that briefing is not negligence. It is recognizing that some information costs more than it is worth the moment you receive it.
Where to start
Before accepting an early or informal briefing on something sensitive, ask what you would actually be able to do with it, and what it would cost you to know it and be unable to act.
If the honest answer is nothing and a great deal, declining the briefing is a legitimate choice, not an oversight.
Reading which specific pieces of information are worth that cost, versus which ones would just box you in, is a judgment only you can make about your own position. What this gives you is the question worth asking before you accept a briefing, not after you are already carrying it.
There is a specific way to decline an early briefing without it reading as disinterest or as trying to avoid responsibility, and it is worth having ready before the next one comes your way.