Accepting an Expert Claim

 

Argument

Experts are individuals or organizations proved to be quite knowledgeable and have authority in a particular field. Most organizations prefer hiring and consulting experts in different skills and service delivery. However, this does not guarantee a perfect result for the organization or the company, as many factors may affect the service delivery by the experts. In such cases, the experts are bound to perform against the expectations. Business organizations explore various methods of making decisions that implement business operations. In this work, an argument is based on the following. This paper presents an argument about the expert claim in making decisions. In particular, the paper seeks to explain the rationality of accepting an expert claim in an event that the expert turn out to be erroneous.

It is unreasonable to accept the expert claims without evaluating and examining such claims. Although experts are believed to be more knowledgeable in their areas of specialization, any person assigning duties by the expert remains accountable for their actions. In business, leader plays a great role in making business decisions which are more effective. For a business to succeed, it relies upon the decisions made by its leaders. Attaining skills in making effective decisions requires intuition, education and experience. According to Reynolds (2011), effective decisions should be interpreted, explained, evaluated and analyzed before being executed. Before accepting a claim from the expert, the claim should also be examined, analyzed and evaluate properly. Without paying attention to the above process, there is a risk of one facing the consequences of claim taken.

Nevertheless, decision making in business involves the following steps. First is the identification of the problem. A specific problem must be revealed before attending to it. Identifying a specific problem enables one to identify a way of solving it. Secondly, the possible solutions for the problem should be well analyzed. This gives a wider range of options that can be considered. In fulfilling this, the decision maker will be able to compare the risks and consider a solution with the lowest risk. Accepting the claims from the experts without considering the risks and the alternatives is unreasonable. The third step is evaluating the probabilities closer to achieving the goal. At this stage, the decision maker can evaluate if the possible solution selected will assist in achieving the right decision. The forth step is making the actual decision (Hew & Cheung, 2014). The decision is therefore made having considered many factors; therefore, failure to follow this reasonable process in making business decisions, errors are prone to occur.

Business decision making should be a collaborative function that needs the contribution of the concerned parties. Experts in a specific field are to be consulted on the best way of executing a function. However, some experts may not be experienced enough to fulfill the requirements of a given task. Upon involving the experts in decision making, proper evaluation, examination and analysis should be done before a solution is adopted.

Furthermore, no matter the position in an organization, each person is accountable his or her decisions. Thinking is a skill that is not naturally endowed but needs to be practiced (Ennis, 2015), and it is the responsibility of everyone to train his/her mind to think critically, and make sound decisions. Reasoning describes one’s capacity to think rationally, and making the right business decisions require rational thinking. It is unreasonable enough to take in the opinions from the experts without examining such opinions through rational and critical thinking.

 

References

Ennis, R. H. (2015). Critical thinking: A streamlined conception. In The Palgrave handbook of critical thinking in higher education (pp. 31-47). Palgrave Macmillan US.

Hew, K. F., & Cheung, W. S. (2014). Improving Social Studies Students’ Critical Thinking. In Using Blended Learning (pp. 59-78). Springer Singapore.

Reynolds, Martin (2011). Critical thinking and systems were thinking: towards a critical literacy for systems thinking in practice. In: Horvath, Christopher P. and Forte, James M. eds. Critical Thinking. New York, USA: Nova Science Publishers, pp. 37-68.