You read about a new idea in the latest best-selling business book. Or a consultant comes to you with a novel proposal. Or one of your direct reports makes an innovative suggestion.
Before taking action on the idea, a bit of healthy skepticism might be in order. Otherwise, you may end up as what Adrian Savage calls a Management Fashionista.
Wikipedia defines a skeptic as, "...one who questions the reliability of certain kinds of claims by subjecting them to a systematic investigation." So just how do you, a busy leader, practice skepticism?
Wayne R. Bartz, PhD, published an article in the Sep/Oct 2002 edition of Skeptical Inquirer in which he laid out a nice acronym to help in applying skepticism to proposals. The guideline is based on the word "CRITIC".
C = Claim. Describe the claim in detail. Think out how it might be demonstrated. Answer what you might expect to observe if the claim were true. Is the claim presented with a balanced view of benefits, drawbacks and uncertainties?
R = Role of the claimant. Basically, what does the person who is making the claim stand to gain or profit from if we accept and act on the claim? Can you tell if the claimant is unbiased, with no stake in your acceptance of the idea?
I = Information backing the claim. What evidence has the claimant provided in support of the claim? Is it evidence that can be verified independently from public sources? Is it anecdotal, or statistically valid. Remember that stories don't prove a claim. The more extreme the claim, the more solid the evidence must be. As Pfeffer and Sutton point out, we need to be much more suspicious of breakthrough claims than of incremental claims.
T = Test. Can you think of a way the claim could be tested? A testable claim is more valid than one that cannot be tested.
I = Independent testing. Has it been done by an unbiased third party? Has the claimant reported on those independent results, whether or not they back up the claim?
C = Cause. Is there a feasible cause proposed for the claim? Does it follow logically from previous studies in the subject?
For more on this approach, see this course outline by Jonathan Mueller of North Central College (Naperville, IL). I also enjoyed this description of CRITIC by the Middle Tennessee Skeptics.
