Since When Is Hindsight Always 20:20?

I don't know why, but the expression “hindsight is 20:20” has always made me grind my teeth, in part because it is so loaded. People treat this expression as a truism when it is really folk wisdom. However, that folk wisdom happens to correlate with a lot of well-validated psychological research. Hindsight encompasses a complex subject with enormous implications for our ability to learn from our experience and improve our performance.

I'm troubled by people's matter-of-fact use of this cliché because they often seem to imply that because hindsight is 20:20, we should reject or minimize what we might learn with its benefit. That is a misinterpretation of this little piece of folk wisdom. The saying “hindsight is 20:20” describes what psychologists know as hindsight bias. Still, hindsight bias reflects our natural tendency to believe, once we know the actual outcome of events, that we could have predicted the outcome with accuracy.

Psychologists have documented the reality of hindsight bias quite well, offering extensively validated research to support the idea that people generally exaggerate their ability to predict the outcome of decisions and events. For example, many people have criticized serious accident investigations for implying that the victims and decision-makers should have known the consequences of their actions because (after the fact) survivors, investigators and others saw those consequences as predictable or even inevitable.

On the other hand, I have also heard people criticize after-action reviews, accident prevention analyses and facilitated learning analyses due to the effects of hindsight bias. Usually, the critics perceived these as allowing accident participants to self-defensively cast the outcomes of their experience as inescapable in order to avoid blame or preserve their image. While the two situations may seem different, hindsight bias lies at the root of both those scenarios.

In the wildland fire service, strong learning cultures can contribute to strong safety cultures and reliable performance. Therefore, we must take care to separate destructive hindsight bias from learning by experience. Such learning includes taking advantage of valuable hindsight. We need to remember that learning from our experience with the benefit of hindsight does not mean engaging in unmitigated hindsight bias. A strong learning culture demands that we are both willing and able to learn the right lessons from our experience. We need to be careful to not throw the baby (our ability to learn from our experience) out with the bath water (an exaggerated belief that we could have predicted the outcome of events).

We typically hear people in the wildland fire service discuss “hindsight bias” as if it is always a bad thing. However, we must also consider its upside. Psychological research has found that, among the many ways we bias our thinking, hindsight bias is a robust one that we cannot avoid easily, if at all. In addition, some research suggests that this bias represents little more than a byproduct of our ability to learn adaptively and continuously — something I think we all agree is pretty useful. So if hindsight bias is a part of adaptive learning — and hard-wired in our brains to boot — we might as well get used to it and channel it productively, taking care to avoid its more destructive effects.

What we want to do is recognize and acknowledge our hindsight bias and take advantage of it to help us learn from our mistakes and those of others so that we can avoid similar errors in the future. If we learn something with the benefit of hindsight bias, the learning is just as valid and valuable. It seems to me that solid, long-term learning from experience is worth the price of a little short-term hindsight bias. This seems particularly true if we recognize and acknowledge our hindsight bias as we use prior events to discover lessons learned. In fact, I would argue that this is precisely what we do through much of our most effective training. Staff rides, sandtable exercises and other learning tools all require people to learn about outcomes, try to see the world through the eyes of people who did not know how the event would end, and update the trainees' understanding of how they might face similar events whenever they employ learning from past events.

While wildland firefighters sometimes resist learning with the benefit of hindsight, as if it is somehow wrong, the opposite influence disturbs me. In the same way that hindsight bias can cause us to be too judgmental about people's decisions and actions, it also can allow people to become overconfident or avoid taking responsibility for negative outcomes. The fact that we fool ourselves with hindsight bias suggests that hindsight is not really 20:20 — it can be more like blinders. Therefore, we want to avoid overdeveloping people's sense that they can predict outcomes, either positive or negative. We also want to help people avoid defensive thought processes that use hindsight bias to deflect responsibility for negative outcomes. Each of these interferes with people's ability to learn from their experience.

The use of hindsight bias comes with some practical advice. For example, remain aware of its influence. Understand that hindsight bias is real, that we all engage in it and that it influences our judgment. However, do not obsess over eliminating hindsight bias because you can't. We can try to teach people to evaluate a decision or an action while avoiding hindsight bias, but research suggests that success would be highly unlikely. Rather than fight it, remain aware of hindsight bias, understand it, acknowledge it and correct for it when possible. Work to recognize hindsight bias, and acknowledge your bias whenever you use it to improve your learning and the learning of others.

Finally, recognize the difference between learning and investigating, and take great pains to separate the two. Use hindsight bias to learn from experience, but do not allow hindsight to determine negligence or drive punitive actions. In a just and learning safety culture, the organization would encourage people to channel their hindsight to enrich learning, but avoid the temptation to punish people after evaluating the decisions and actions of others with the benefit of hindsight.

Mike DeGrosky is chief executive officer of the Guidance Group, a consulting organization specializing in the human and organizational aspects of the fire service, and an adjunct instructor in leadership studies for Fort Hays State University. Follow him on Twitter @guidegroup or via LinkedIn.