We tend to assume that, faced with the same problem on separate occasions, professionals will typically arrive at the same judgements — doctors will make the same diagnoses, mortgage lenders will set the same rates, judges will hand down the same sentences. But is professional judgement really as reliable as we think it is?

This week on the The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, the team discuss Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgement, the new book from Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony and Cass R. Sunstein. We cover:

• what 'noise' is in the context of judgement
• the distinction between noise and bias
• strategies for minimising noise
• potential implications for L&D

Show notes

Noise is out now and is available from all good booksellers.

The ProPublica article Ross G mentioned can be found at: https://www.propublica.org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing

He also referred to 'This Place Is Full of It: Towards an Organizational Bullshit Perception Scale', a paper which is explored in this article: https://www.psypost.org/2021/07/researchers-explore-employee-perceptions-of-bullshit-in-the-workplace-with-the-organizational-bullshit-perception-scale-61415

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Connect with our speakers

If you'd like to share your thoughts on this episode, connect with our speakers on Twitter:

• Ross Dickie - @RossDickieEW
• Owen Ferguson - @OwenFerguson
• Ross Garner - @RossGarnerEW
• Nahdia Khan - @_nahdia_khan
• Gemma Towersey - @gemmatowersey