Seeking expert advice is a little like shopping for a car. You don't just pick the first one that becomes available or is the most convenient to reach. There are distinct varieties to select from: differences in experience, training, interests and areas of expertise, professional attitude and price range. Realize that (1) the effectiveness of your decision-making could very likely hinge on which professionals you choose at the outset to subsequently rely upon for providing you with all the pertinent information you may need for basing your decisions, and (2) consistently placing too much trust in any particular professional or group of professionals, however accurate they may have been before, without recognizing a possibility for oversight among them can again lead to less than optimal decisions.

I. Quoting an Expert

  When we become leaders, our subordinates view us as extensions of expert authority. They ask us things that we simply don't know, that we must then in turn ask others who are more familiar with the particular subject in question. Remember doing this with your parents or teachers when you were a kid?

Our brains appear programmed with predispositions to believe what authority figures tell us. — David L Weiner, Brain Tricks: How to Cope with the Dark Side of Your Brain ... and Win the Ultimate Mind Game, 1993.

  So, expert advice that you quote is perceived as more reliable than if they had received the advice themselves. They trust your superior supervision. The point here is that you should exert the extra effort and attention to detail toward ascertaining its true reliability before handing it over to others to work with. Of course, you should do this anyhow, but this is just a little motivator to help goad your efforts an appropriate direction.

  Prudence dictates that you keep this in mind before uttering something you may subsequently regret. Remember how you argued with your parents? “But you said that they said....” Your employees or subordinates will quote you just as readily!

II. Expert Reliability

  Now the table has turned! Are you placing ALL of your confidence in one expert? Don't let yourself fall into that potential trap. You are yourself a professional; others depend on your shrewdness.

It seems thrifty to believe ... that asking just one expert is enough ... because it is usually quite expensive to obtain ... expert advice, [but] it is useful to remind ourselves that specialists who are top experts often disagree on what is best ... each having his or her own good reasons.... Remember that experts are only human and can make bad mistakes, like anyone else. — Daniel D Wheeler and Irving L Janis, A Practical Guide for Making Decisions, 1980.

  This problem is not an easy one to solve. Nothing can be more disconcerting than having an authority figure you trust tell you, “Problem taken care of,” only to discover later that matters weren’t handled quite as you had anticipated. Pursuing a second opinion is usually the easiest way to work around it, but this solution is not necessarily foolproof either, and actually doing so customarily entails considerable costs.

  Nevertheless, it’s the only practical solution you may really have! You're trying to avoid the chance that the expert whom you are relying upon might be overlooking some subtle detail which could actually prove helpful (or harmful) to you. So, you seek the advice of another who may possess a different perspective on your particular situation. Though certainly not foolproof, seeking the advice of yet another qualified individual can at times lead to some alternative course of action that the first advisor may have overlooked. Or, the second advisor may very well make the same mistake that the first did! Though this may be rare, sometimes a third opinion can lead to such a discovery! Fourth opinion? Fifth …? And on you go with gambling on all the probabilities that we have all come to expect life to throw our way!

  Bear in mind that the "authority figures" and "professionals" you rely upon are human just like you, equally susceptible to all the emotions, moods and blunders you are. They do make mistakes! Never assume otherwise. So, do what you can to learn what their particular fields of professional expertise are. ANY shortcomings in experience, knowledge, training or resources ought to be readily revealed so that potential problems might be circumvented, by either

• consulting others whose knowledge may complement his/hers, or
• finding someone else who may more competently occupy the position.

This is where open communication, consulting other professionals, extensively researching the matter and seeking the assistance of dedicated others can mean the difference between recognizing that rare, but significant, detail that could seriously hamper your plans or later confronting an embarrassing scenario because you had not recognized its possible significant impact in advance.

  Finally, note too that even when you seek professional advice, a professional belief is still an item of contention: There are other professionals who would likely disagree. Carefully consider the consequences should that belief turn out to be untrue, especially when little or no scientific data is available to either verify or reject it. Remember to prepare for the unexpected, before it surprises you some day!

III. Decisions of Emotion and Influence

  Decisions of emotion or influence are always particularly tricky. These decisions are tricky because they always involve a lack of needed information that cannot be found, learned or retrieved in some way before the deadline for making the decision arrives, and you, the decision-maker, are forced to rely on the opinions, life experiences or beliefs of someone else in consideration of some pertinent alternative course of action.

  Most persons would claim that these decisions are really matters of trust: How much trust or faith do you place in the individual, group or organization/institution who is trying to cajole you into doing something that may be (though, not necessarily) in their personal favor? This claim is WRONG.

  Why? Because of the consequences that your decision will force you into. If you decide to be influenced in one way or another, the outcome(s) of that decision are still YOUR responsibility, regardless of the degree of trust that you may have in that influential other. You still must consider all the potential consequences to your decision! Are you ready to be held accountable for all the possible subsequent outcome(s)?

  Remember that behind every opinion is an assumption, behind every life experience is a probability of occurrence, and behind every rigid belief is a personal desire to believe. You are a professional: Don't gamble on the assumptions and/or desires of an influential other. Never allow another to sway you into making a decision. Always stick to the facts, to the tried and true scientific method of formulating hypotheses, experimenting to test their validity and repeating those experiments to either verify or contradict the initial results. Because, after all, YOUR decision is YOUR responsibility, and YOU will be held accountable for ALL subsequent consequences.

IV. Competence

  Always must we bear in mind that however simple a particular profession may seem, there is likely some esoteric information we don’t yet know. (Otherwise, it wouldn’t be a profession in and of itself to begin with!) Always must we exercise the necessary legwork to seek out, locate and consult “those who know absolutely” when confronting a problem “we think we know seemingly.” Nowadays, certified knowledge will always outperform personal experience and guess-work. Don't fool yourself into believing that you already know everything you need when you haven't the training of another more qualified professional. There is no specialty nowadays without a tremendous amount of prior effort, study and research associated with it that a learned and certified graduate would be entirely ignorant of.

  Moreover, always must we bear in mind that the most competent will always outperform the lesser. Rooting all our decision-making solely on an inexperienced graduate, for example, may at times seem adequate, but possibly not robust and totally prepared.

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This web page was last updated on Monday, February 2, 2004.
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