Navigating Cognitive Biases: Making Clearer Decisions at Work

Course Overview

Every day we make dozens of quick judgments: estimating how long a task will take, deciding whether a risk is worth flagging, choosing which information to trust. Most of the time our mental shortcuts serve us well, but they can also lead us into predictable errors known as cognitive biases. This online tutorial introduces the most common biases that affect workplace decisions, explains why they happen, and shows how they play out in real situations such as planning, safety assessments, problem-solving, and team discussions.

Through practical examples, short scenarios, and self-check activities, participants will learn to recognise bias in their own thinking and in group settings, and will leave with simple, repeatable techniques to slow down at the right moments and make more balanced, evidence-based decisions. No prior knowledge is required. The tutorial is suitable for employees at all levels, especially those who make or influence decisions about people, schedules, resources, or risk.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this tutorial, participants will be able to:

Explain what cognitive biases are and why the brain relies on mental shortcuts when making decisions.
Identify common biases that affect workplace decisions, including confirmation bias, anchoring, overconfidence, the planning fallacy, availability bias, and groupthink.
Recognise warning signs that a decision may be influenced by bias, both in their own reasoning and in team discussions.
Analyse a workplace scenario to determine which biases may be shaping the outcome and what their consequences could be.
Apply practical debiasing techniques, such as seeking disconfirming evidence, using checklists, considering the opposite, and inviting dissenting views, to improve the quality of decisions.
Develop a personal action plan for building bias-awareness into routine tasks such as planning, risk assessment, and problem-solving.