Practical tips for preventing bias from undermining important decisions

As I write, the NCAA College basketball tournament, lovingly referred to as March Madness, is being played in the US, and as I’ve enthusiastically cheered (and lamented) my favorite teams, I’ve become hyperaware of some of my own unconscious biases. The variety in how the star players look—short, tall, thin, muscular—surprised me. Then, when the announcer said, “Three points! Team X is certainly lucky to have recruited a star player from [country Y]!” I caught myself thinking “Y? Since when do good college ball players come from there?” That’s some biased thinking!

We carry an array of bias baggage with us everywhere we go, and mostly it’s pretty harmless stuff. When we bring it into important decision-making moments, though, our biases can undermine what we are trying to achieve and create an environment with unfair advantages and disadvantages. If the recruiter had passed over that basketball player because “good players don’t come from Y,” it could have cost the team the win.

I’m sure we all have stories where we’ve seen a potentially excellent candidate be overlooked because of bias. A job applicant not making the interview cut after a conversation about their last name and their accent. A committee member saying “hiring an assistant professor is like proposing marriage” when discussing the (only) female candidate. A medal not awarded to an awesome nominee because excellence in the arts isn’t measured by citations. Discomfort in the boardroom when the proportion of women exceeds 50%.

These examples are obvious. But it’s surprising how little bias it takes to achieve dominance of one group at the top of an organization or nominating committee. A computer simulation published in American Psychologist in 1996 of an 8-level organization with a typical pyramid structure showed that a bias towards men of only 1% of the variance in employee ratings led to 65% of the top positions filled by men. Such a slight bias in favor of one group over another is well within the wiggle-room of decision making with a subjective component. It’s also why the uneven playing field is so hard to level.

Against that challenge, what can we do about it? I have chaired or served on dozens of juries, hiring and promotion committees, grant evaluation panels, and award, medal, and fellowship panels for national and international universities, societies, companies, and other organizations. I’ve collected a few practical tips-and-tricks designed to undermine the effects of underlying bias in panel decisions about who makes the shortlist and who wins.

• Start the discussion from a noncontroversial position. We can all agree that our goal is to identify the most excellent nomination. I have never heard anyone argue “let’s choose second best this time” or “diverse and mediocre is the outcome I want.”
• Start from the position that we all have biases that can affect our decision-making. This idea shouldn’t be controversial, and even if it’s not true, the steps taken to acknowledge it still lead to stronger decision-making.
• Send out a few resources about bias with the nominations and tell panel members they will be discussed before assessment begins. The Royal Society of Chemistry has an excellent 1.5-minute video called Implicit Bias and Fair Decision-
  Making, and Harvard’s Project Implicit has fantastic resources, including an online test to uncover unconscious biases. Some institutions, like New Zealand’s Royal Society Te Apārangi, have a very effective separate pre-meeting to highlight how to identify and evaluate different forms of excellence.
• Follow through. Even if panel members have checked a box or attended training, I think it’s important to explicitly remind everyone of the importance of making as unbiased a decision as possible just before the intense discussion of nominations begins.
• Whenever possible, frame discussions about the nomination, rather than the candidate, and focus on strengths and areas that need strengthening. This approach keeps the focus on rating performance, not people.
• Discuss every nomination. My favorite approach comes from serving on a panel chaired by Sir Ian Walmsley and works well when nominations are pre-ranked before the meeting. I split the applications into three groups: The largest group (about 50%) is the lower-ranked candidates, the top-ranked group has about 30% of the candidates, and the middle-ranked group about 20%. For about half of the meeting, the only question we answer is whether a nomination should be bumped into the next higher category—have we missed a “diamond in the rough?” We start with the lower ranks, then the middle, then finally discuss the top category. Only in the top group do we focus on actually ranking candidates, whether nomination A should be above or below nomination B. When coupled with the previous suggestion, it leads to positive, fair discussions about all nominations, with most time appropriately spent on the consensus top tier.
• Call out bias. Everyone on the panel should feel comfortable to call out obvious bias.
• Assess the results in the meeting, with sufficient time for review. Is the panel happy with the rankings? This might include looking at success rates for different groups, or at balance across the short list. In the three-tiered approach above, it might look at differences in balance in the different tiers. Ask explicitly whether anyone feels that bias has crept into an assessment of any candidate’s nomination. If the answer is “yes” to any of these, then take a step back and reassess.

At the heart of these tips is making the unconscious bias conscious. While we cannot always change what ideas pop into our heads, we absolutely can change how we act. First, though, we must be aware of those ideas, the quiet little voices that influence our key decisions. It doesn’t take much time, and it allows us to focus attention where it belongs, upon the excellence we are tasked with assessing.

The great thing about actively fighting bias in decision- making is the better we do it today, the sooner we won’t have to do it anymore. After all, these days very few people are surprised that a 5’8” woman can be an excellent basketball player, as exciting to watch as her team cruises to the Final Four.

Cather Simpson is professor of physics and chemical sciences at the University of Auckland, CEO of Orbis Diagnostics, and SPIE President-Elect.

 

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