The rigour trap: when decisions come before reasons

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^{Happy Thursday, everyone. I’m Shaida Darian, a Business and Organisational Psychologist. I’m fascinated by three questions: Why does this happen? What can we do about it? And when should we act? Join me down the rabbit hole. With any luck, we’ll find Wonderland.}

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 few years ago, I sat on an executive selection panel for a major transformation lead. During a ten-minute coffee break, before the formal interviews had begun, a colleague leaned over and said, “I think Candidate B is our person they just have the right presence.”

Three hours of interviewing and scoring followed. The process looked thorough. Yet as the panel discussed the candidates, I noticed how readily the interpretation of their answers seemed to favour that early preference. I began to wonder whether we were testing an impression or building a case around it.

The ninety-page interview pack gave us plenty to discuss. Whether it gave Candidate B a genuine chance of being ruled out was less clear.

I’m Shaida Darian, a business and organisational psychologist, and decision-making has been central to both my MSc and PhD research. What interests me is the gap between the influences shaping a judgement and the reasons we give for it.

That colleague’s first impression might have been right. Experience can help us recognise something valuable before we can fully explain it. But the purpose of the interview was to establish whether that impression survived examination. An early preference should have remained open to revision.

What stayed with me was how difficult that distinction could be to see from inside an apparently rigorous process. We had questions, scores and detailed discussion. Had any of them meaningfully challenged where we started?

A decision can be carefully explained without having been carefully examined. Three strands of research help explain how that gap can arise.

First, knowing what we prefer is different from knowing why we prefer it. Nisbett and Wilson’s research challenged the assumption that people have reliable access to the processes shaping their judgements. Our explanations can draw on plausible accounts of what influenced us while overlooking factors that actually mattered. This does not make every explanation false. It makes explanation alone insufficient evidence of how a decision was reached.

Second, reasoning can serve a preferred conclusion. In her review of motivated reasoning, Ziva Kunda described how the desire to reach a particular outcome can shape which information people retrieve and how they evaluate it. A person may sincerely consider their conclusion reasonable because they can produce evidence supporting it. The difficulty lies in whether competing evidence received comparable attention. More analysis does not resolve that problem if its purpose remains defending the favourite. 

Third, even the standards used to judge the evidence can move. In Uhlmann and Cohen’s recruitment experiments, participants adjusted the importance of qualifications in ways that favoured male applicants for a traditionally male role. Committing to criteria before learning the applicant’s gender eliminated discrimination in the relevant experiment. The implication for a selection panel is uncomfortable: a scorecard can appear objective while the importance attached to its categories shifts around a preferred candidate. 

None of this means that emotion should be removed from decisions or intuition dismissed. Research on emotion and decision-making identifies both beneficial and harmful influences. Kahneman and Klein explain that skilled intuition depends on opportunities to learn reliable patterns in an environment. The strength of someone’s conviction, however, does not establish the accuracy of their judgement. 

These studies do not diagnose what happened in any particular boardroom. They establish reasons to examine the process beyond its final presentation. For organisations, the risk is that an initial preference survives because the discussion became increasingly effective at defending it. The resulting decision may be right. Its supporting narrative cannot, by itself, demonstrate that it was properly tested.

Leaders need to establish whether a decision process genuinely tests a preference. Three practices can make that examination more visible.

Principle 1: Set criteria before reviewing options.

Agree what success requires, which factors matter most and any minimum requirements before assessing candidates or proposals. This reduces the opportunity to redefine merit around a favourite. Where new information justifies changing criteria, document the reason and reassess every option consistently. Review whether changes reflect a better understanding of the task or selectively benefit one contender.

Principle 2: Record initial judgements before group discussion.

Ask participants to note their preliminary assessment, supporting evidence and uncertainties independently. Keep these records private until everyone has contributed, so the most senior person’s preference does not frame the exercise. After discussion, record what strengthened, weakened or changed each assessment. Judge progress through the quality of evidence considered not the number of people who changed their minds.

Principle 3: Make the preferred option face a credible challenge.

Assign someone to examine contradictory evidence and develop the strongest alternative case. For consequential projects, use a pre-mortem: imagine the proposal has failed and independently identify plausible reasons before discussing them together. Assess whether the exercise changes assumptions, safeguards or the final recommendation. A longer risk register means little if none of its contents affects the decision.

These practices make scrutiny easier to inspect; they do not guarantee an unbiased outcome. A defensible recommendation should show the criteria applied, the alternatives examined and how contrary evidence was addressed. The final presentation should reveal that work, rather than substitute for it.

Looking back at that selection panel, Candidate B may have been the right choice. What remained unclear was whether our process could have led us to choose anyone else. 

That is the test behind the rigour: whether the evidence has a genuine opportunity to change the decision, even when the case for it is already persuasive.

If something here speaks to you, I’d love to hear it.

Until next week,
Shaida

P.S. Ninety pages later, we were still agreeing with the coffee break.

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