ACT! Recognize and act on assumptions#

Wrong assumptions are a problem in many fields. You can improve the assumptions you make by becoming more aware of when you make them. Recognizing assumptions can be challenging in any environment. This section helps you recognize assumptions and deal with them.

There are two main kinds of assumptions:

• Conscious assumptions. You consciously accept a piece of information as a fact, while understanding that it may not be.

• Unconscious assumptions. You unconsciously accept a piece of information as a fact, without questioning whether it is. These are the dangerous assumptions, however they are also difficult to detect because they are unconscious!

We all make many assumptions about the world we live in. In our time pressured society, making assumptions allows us to be as effective as we are. Imagine if every day we had to check that each part of the car worked before starting it. Imagine if we had to call the local transport office to make sure the train is coming that day. Think about having to ring the bank every day just to check our money is still there.

There are two parts of assumptions to consider:

• Strength. Our assumptions become stronger with experience. The car starts most of the time. The train usually arrives. Our money stays where it is (well, if we don’t touch it). The more we experience the expected outcome, the more we treat the assumption as fact.

• Impact. The need to question assumptions usually arises when the impact of our assumption being wrong has an effect we would rather avoid. However, this is difficult if you don’t realize you have made an assumption.

Unfortunately, wrong assumptions cost our society much time and money. Wrong assumptions by pilots (and others) cause accidents and loss of life. Many aircraft accident investigations show the pilot made an assumption that led to the accident or incident. Some of the most common are “I can get through the weather” and “I have enough fuel.”

The key to staying safe is to turn unconscious assumptions into conscious assumptions. Once they are conscious assumptions, you can then use a simple process to decide whether the assumption is safe.

In this section, I provide you with a technique I call the assumption buster technique. This technique is a good way to deal with unconscious assumptions. You can apply this assumption buster technique to check assumptions you make in any field, not just aviation. You can train yourself to recognize and act on assumptions before they become issues or problems.

There are two steps. The first is to set up triggers for common assumptions. Assumption triggers are visualizations and assertions you can review that help pull your assumptions from the unconscious to the conscious mind. The second step is to ACT on them when they arise. ACT stands for Assumption, Contingency, and Test.

Let’s look at these two steps in more detail.