Bye-Bye Bias: Tricks for Staying Objective at Work

We're all creatures of habit. And, that often means we slip complacently into our own little world, where life is comfortable and we know the rules of the game. Unfortunately, what this tends to do is create blinders so that we develop tunnel vision. We become egocentric. Egocentrism, according to Wikipedia, is "the tendency to perceive, understand and interpret the world in terms of the self." We end up losing our ability to walk in someone else's shoes.

In quantum mechanics, there's a saying that "the observer affects the observed." We commonly think of this as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Say, for instance, you were repeatedly told how bad or good you were as a child. It's very likely that you would grow up according to which view was planted in your mind. Or, what if you went to a palm reader who said you were going to meet the love of your life? How would that influence your behavior with each new person you met? This combination of egocentrism and the quantum-mechanics philosophy has a big impact on how we perceive the world and helps to create our personal bias - our perception.

Thinking Critically to Eliminate Bias

Bias can influence many aspects of our lives and affect our decision-making, problem-solving and learning processes. Because we get into a groove with our singular mindset, sometimes, we find it difficult to "think outside the box." Generally, biased thinking comes from one of these seven basic errors:

• Confirmation bias: Seeking information to prove, rather than disprove, a theory.
• Hindsight bias: Seeing past results as being more probable. Remember: Hindsight is always 20/20.
• Clustering: Seeing patterns where none existent.
• Recency bias: Giving more weight to recent data. In performance management, this is commonly known as the "halo effect."
• Anchoring bias: Relying too heavily on a single piece of information when making decisions.
• Overconfidence effect: Believing we're more correct in our judgments than we actually are.
• Fundamental attribution error: Presuming that peoples' actions indicate their character, rather than looking at the situation that causes the behavior.

Breaking Out of Old Habits

Unfortunately, we all have biases based on our particular life experiences. And, overcoming these habits in thinking requires thinking in different ways. While there are no absolutes to completely eliminate personal bias, there are several ways to help you better solve problems, especially when working in a team. Here are three:

• Brainstorming: Teams can put their heads together to generate a list of multiple alternatives and solutions. Keep in mind that there should be no editing - all ideas are valid (until proven otherwise). And, the crazier, the better! Also, don't forget to expand on and alter other team members' ideas to enlarge the list.
• Synectics: The purpose of synectics is to put something you don't know into terms that you do know. A.K.A. Making the strange familiar. This requires you to first define the problem, such as low employee morale, and then explain it with familiar analogies. In this case, low employee morale may make you think of being in the loser's locker room after a big game. By redefining the original problem in new terms, you may gain new insights to a solution.
• Definition reversal: By reversing or contradicting the currently accepted view or definition of a problem, you can expand the way you look at it and potentially generate new ideas. So, in the case of low employee morale, the problem could be reversed to be that the morale is too high. Solving the problem from this direction may help to create new ideas.

Case Study

The idea is that by eliminating bias, you can help your team to think and act more creatively. Here's how one employer handled their bias issue:

An orchestra that was recruiting violinists noticed that they kept hiring males. So, in an effort to eliminate their perceived bias, they changed the screening process to eliminate the visual portion of the interview. With the screening committee in the audience, each applicant would walk out on stage and perform behind a closed curtain. The hope was that applicants would only be judged on their ability to play.

However, the all-male hiring continued. What they realized was that the sound a candidate's shoes made across the wood stage was distinctive. High heels were instantly recognizable. Fortunately, there was an easy remedy. From then on, all candidates were required to remove their shoes before venturing out to perform. And, so, a lesson was learned.