Take Off the Bias Blindfold To Make Better Decisions

We’ve all done it: Made a decision that seemed like the best choice at the time, only to watch things go wayyyy off the rails. You start to get that sinking feeling in your stomach, that tightness in your shoulders, that inner critic yelling in your ear.

You wonder, “What could I have done differently?”

I recently started a series on decision-making. We started with time…how to spend less time making decisions so you have more time to act on them.

Today I want to talk about when choices go bad, even under brilliant leadership.

Most times, the problem isn’t the lack of experience or knowledge. It’s something that’s a lot trickier to deal with: bias!

The Bias Blindfold: How Our Brains Can Justify Anything

I had a client James* who came to our coaching session feeling stressed. His team was shepherding the organization’s transition to a new software system that would provide much-needed visibility across departments.  

But when I asked how the project was going, James groaned. The software was great, but their approach to rolling it out was not going as planned. 

“It’s too late to change course now,” James lamented. “We have no choice but to power through and stick with our timeline.”

We have no choice? 

Was that really true?

When we started breaking down James’ thought process we discovered a very different truth: he was already so invested in the project that he had completely justified the decision to keep moving forward as planned, even if it wasn’t the best choice for his team.

And that’s the problem with bias…once you’re biased towards a certain decision or outcome, it’s so easy to justify it. In fact, the more knowledgeable and experienced you are, the more you risk falling into this trap! 

After our session, James challenged his (and senior leadership’s) assumptions about the timeline and approach to the rollout. They decided to pull back, slow down, and change up some communications. Though there were some embarrassing moments along the way, the transition was ultimately successful. 

But James wasn’t able to see what was best for the team until after he became aware of his bias and quit justifying it.

That’s how biases work: they act like blindfolds that prevent us from seeing alternative paths.

Increasing Awareness: 5 Biases to Look For

Throughout my coaching career, I’ve noticed there are five biases that continually show up in decision-making:

➡️ Confirmation bias: We seek information that confirms what we already think and discount what doesn’t. In James’ case, because he thought the rollout should follow the planned timeline, he kept looking for reasons to keep supporting his original decision.

This bias quickly grows dangerous. When teams realize their opinions are always ignored, they stop volunteering contradictory information. The workplace becomes a big echo chamber, fostering more bad decisions down the road.

➡️ The planning fallacy: This one gets the best of us even when we have past experience proving otherwise. We consistently underestimate how long, costly, or difficult something will be.

This was perhaps the biggest bias in James’ thinking, as he revealed that he and his team had underestimated how much time and effort would be needed for communication, training, and data migration for a seamless company-wide software switch. 

➡️ The sunk cost fallacy: We often continue investing in something because of what we’ve already put in. The more we put in, the more committed we feel. When I heard James say, “we have no choice but to stick with our timeline,” it was a sign that he might resist doing what was necessary to get his team on the right track because they were already so far along on the project. 

Leaders often feel sunk cost more acutely than their team members, because abandoning a decision can feel like admitting failure publicly. But knowing when to quit/pivot is an important part of leadership too!

➡️ The HIPPO effect: The Highest Paid Person’s Opinion silences the room. This one is systemic as much as personal. It’s not just the leader’s bias; it’s the result of an unhealthy workplace culture. A work culture where team members can’t provide pushback and feedback on decisions is a recipe for poor decisions.

➡️ The either/or trap: Under pressure, leaders may collapse a complex decision into two options. This is a normal stress response. When leaders find themselves stuck in this binary mindset, it takes discipline to stop looking at X vs Y and ask what a third (or fourth) option might look like.

Putting It Into Practice

What makes biases tricky is that we don’t naturally “grow out” of them with knowledge and experience. It takes awareness—knowing what to look for and how to respond—to make more objective decisions.

Next time you face a high-stakes decision, go through the following three steps:

1. Assess your decision-making process and notice which biases you are most susceptible to.
2. After you take a stance, assign someone to argue the other side or get feedback from your team.
3. Always ask yourself, “what might I be missing?” “how might my thinking be biased?” or “what would have to be true for me to be wrong?” before making the final decision.

It’s impossible to eliminate bias, but you can learn to notice potential pitfalls. These three simple steps can go a long way towards building that awareness.

Over the next few weeks, as I continue this series, I’ll be sharing more habits and structures that you can build into your decision-making process to reduce stress, reduce bias, and make confident choices. 

I hope you continue to follow along, and please reply and let me know what has been most helpful for you so far.

P.S. If you missed the first email in this decision-making series, click here to read it and catch up!

P.P.S. Client names and identifying details are always changed to protect their privacy.