Professional Judgement Is Not a Hat

A good friend of mine used to get very annoyed with the phrase “professional judgement”. He argued that you either had judgement or not – it was not a hat you put on when you’re being professional.

And in a way, he was right – but incomplete.

Judgement isn’t a hat you put on, but it is a muscle – one that professionals are expected to deliberately strengthen over time.

But the word judgement itself confounds people. Is it synonymous with discrimination – like the ability to distinguish between two good wines? Or is it more aligned with judicial – ability to discern between right and wrong?

Is it passive or active? Do we pass judgement or use judgement? And is professional judgement the result of an educational process so that you are no longer dabbling but using a higher grade of judgement?

Like so much language the word can be used to clarify or to obscure.

Here is how professionals should understand the word judgement.

It is the irreplaceable human ingredient in decision making. It is the integration of emotion, experience, context, and moral sense.

AI, algorithms and rubrics can provide structure to complex decisions. The results seem impartial, free of bias. But in an attempt to remove distortion, we often remove depth.

When we try to strip bias from every decision we make a grave error. Bias is not the opposite of judgement. It is judgement’s raw material – the intuitive data we’ve absorbed through lived experience, which still requires conscious examination.