We make decisions every day. Lots of them. All require a level of judgment. For example, we judge one job candidate as better than the rest or we judge this new product as the one to bring to the market. Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass Sunstein wrote a well-researched book called Noise: A flaw in human judgment that talks about the noise in all judgment systems because they involve humans. Noise is the variability that exists from people judging a situation with the same conditions and reaching a different conclusion. For example, a criminal’s sentencing decision varied not on the facts of the case, but on things like which judge and what conditions occurred before and on the judgment day. This type of error occurred everywhere the researchers looked.

We can’t eliminate noise, but with conscious effort, we can minimize it. The authors provide many ideas for reducing the noise in your judgment. This begins with understanding how noise enters the process. They identified three sub-categories of noise.

1. Level noise will always exist, like when we make micro-adjustments to the steering wheel while driving straight.
2. Pattern noise occurs when people have the same set of information and reach different judgments (there really can be a ‘hanging judge’.)
3. Occasion noise comes from what the authors call the lottery of the situation. This (frighteningly) includes the day of the week, the weather, the local sports team’s performance, and the time of day. This equates to ‘waking up on the wrong side of the bed’.

Each chapter in their book contains thought-provoking questions r to stimulate discussion about how to acknowledge and address noise. The attached whitepaper summarizes their ideas and how you can use them. We often say, “It’s a judgment call.” When you reduce the noise, you will make better decisions.