Review candidate judgments before confidence, first impressions or outcome stories become stronger than the evidence.
Open →Decision technique
Consider the opposite
Force a preferred explanation to compete with a credible alternative.
When to use
A specific reasoning move for a specific problem.
When evidence collection is drifting toward support for one preferred conclusion.
Procedure
Run the technique.
- Write the current conclusion in one sentence.
- Write the strongest plausible alternative.
- List evidence that would be more likely if the alternative were true.
- Search for or request that evidence before finalizing the decision.
Limit
What this technique cannot guarantee.
A weak straw-man alternative adds little value. The alternative must be genuinely plausible.
Situations
Where this may be useful.
Judge performance without letting one recent result or known outcome rewrite the quality of the underlying work.
Open →Protect a negotiation from the first number and from pressure to justify a position already taken.
Open →Use AI to expand research without treating fluent text, repeated output or model confidence as verification.
Open →Evidence-linked concepts
Why this check may matter.
Read the evidence and limits before treating this technique as relevant.
Open →Practice this technique
See when the move becomes useful.
The team already prefers one candidate. Interviewers ask that candidate to explain strengths, while competing candidates are pressed mainly on weaknesses.
Skill: Evidence evaluationOpen scenario →