Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment

The authors describe decision hygiene as a systematic approach to reducing noise in human judgments, where “the goal is to prevent an unspecified range of potential errors before they occur” (283). Components of decision hygiene include: structuring complex judgments and breaking them up into relevant component parts; ensuring that groups focus on the question at hand rather than substituting it with an easier one of their choices; and identifying level, pattern, and occasion noise that may impact decisions and ensuring that measures are taken to promote independent judgment and prevent informational cascades. The authors recommend appointing a decision observer who has a checklist to examine the quality of an organization’s decisions, as a smart way to assess the noise that may be affecting judgments in an organization.

An informational cascade is defined as the phenomenon that occurs during a decision-making process when events such as an influential person’s early involvement cause others in the team to copycat their stance on a particular issue. Although informational cascades produce an illusion of agreement, the authors view them as a form of noise, as a unanimous decision has been reached less from real agreement than from people subordinating their own judgment to that of a person they respect.