Radical Doubt

"Most of us were raised to think that smart people always know the right answer. From gold stars in grade school to performance reviews in the office, we're rewarded for certainty. Yet as Bidhan ("Bobby") Parmar, professor at the UVA Darden School of Business, argues in his new book, Radical Doubt, clinging to certainty is precisely what derails us when the stakes are highest. "The only thing that spoon-feeding teaches us," he quips, "is the shape of a spoon"."

"The hardest problems we face in life, whether in careers, relationships, or society, rarely come with single right answers. They're what Parmar calls "moments of doubt": multi-criteria choices that involve competing goals, high stakes, and deep uncertainty. Think of a high-performing employee whose behavior poisons team culture, or the decision to pursue a dream job overseas just as a parent falls ill. The old playbook of being a "right-answer getter" not only fails here, it backfires."

Seeking certainty leads to poor choices in complex, high-stakes problems because such problems lack single right answers and require ongoing learning. Doubt signals incomplete assumptions and prompts exploration of competing goals, trade-offs, and additional information. High performers treat intuition as a testable hypothesis rather than final verdicts, delaying closure to surface remainders. Rushing to simplify or rationalize first instincts produces flawed judgments. Embracing uncertainty fosters better judgment, creativity, adaptability, and long-term decision quality across careers, relationships, and organizational decisions. Rapid technological and social change amplifies the need for reflective, hypothesis-driven decision processes.

Read at Psychology Today