FAST Critical Thinking and Decision Making 5 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A team must decide quickly under time pressure with incomplete information. The best critical thinking approach is to:
- Delay all decisions until complete information is available
- Identify the most critical unknowns, make the best decision possible, and build in a review checkpoint (Correct answer)
- Assign the decision to the most senior person to avoid blame
- Use the solution that worked in the most recent similar situation
Correct answer: Identify the most critical unknowns, make the best decision possible, and build in a review checkpoint
Effective decision-making under uncertainty involves identifying key gaps, acting on best available information, and creating a mechanism to course-correct.
Question 2: Which of the following best demonstrates inductive reasoning?
- All mammals are warm-blooded; whales are mammals; therefore whales are warm-blooded
- Every project completed on Monday this year finished under budget, so Monday project starts tend to be cost-efficient (Correct answer)
- If a rule applies universally, it must apply in this specific case
- The policy states all vendors must be pre-approved, so this vendor requires pre-approval
Correct answer: Every project completed on Monday this year finished under budget, so Monday project starts tend to be cost-efficient
Inductive reasoning draws general conclusions from specific observations, though the conclusion remains probabilistic rather than certain.
Question 3: A risk assessment rates an event as high-impact but very low-probability. The most rational response is to:
- Ignore it since it is unlikely to occur
- Develop a contingency plan proportional to the potential impact (Correct answer)
- Treat it with the same urgency as a high-probability event
- Eliminate all activities associated with the risk immediately
Correct answer: Develop a contingency plan proportional to the potential impact
Low-probability, high-impact risks warrant contingency planning — not ignoring or over-reacting — so resources are available if the event occurs.
Question 4: An employee notices her team consistently attributes project failures to external factors (bad luck, poor client) but takes full credit for successes. This pattern is called:
- Confirmation bias
- Self-serving bias (Correct answer)
- Fundamental attribution error
- Optimism bias
Correct answer: Self-serving bias
Self-serving bias is the tendency to attribute successes to oneself and failures to external causes to protect self-esteem.
Question 5: When evaluating an argument, which question is most useful for identifying a hidden assumption?
- How long did the author spend writing this?
- What must be true for the conclusion to follow from the premises? (Correct answer)
- Does the author have any academic credentials?
- How many sources are cited in the argument?
Correct answer: What must be true for the conclusion to follow from the premises?
Hidden assumptions are unstated premises the argument depends on; exposing them is key to evaluating argument validity.
Question 6: A decision tree shows two paths: Path X yields $80,000 with 70% probability and -$20,000 with 30% probability. Path Y yields $50,000 with certainty. What is the expected value of Path X?
- $50,000
- $56,000 (Correct answer)
- $60,000
- $62,000
Correct answer: $56,000
Expected value = (0.70 × $80,000) + (0.30 × -$20,000) = $56,000 − $6,000 = $56,000.
Question 7: Which of the following is the strongest evidence that a conclusion is well-supported?
- The conclusion is held by the majority of people in the organization
- Multiple independent, peer-reviewed studies consistently reach the same conclusion (Correct answer)
- A highly respected expert personally endorses the conclusion
- The conclusion has been published in a widely read industry magazine
Correct answer: Multiple independent, peer-reviewed studies consistently reach the same conclusion
Independent replication across rigorous studies is the gold standard of evidence, reducing the chance that results are due to bias or error.
FAST Critical Thinking and Decision Making 5
A team must decide quickly under time pressure with incomplete information.
The best critical thinking approach is to: