Feedback: evaluating a decision without confusing it with its outcome
After a non-conformity, knowledge of the outcome tends to frame the entire discussion about what should have been done. The managerial question is specific: how can feedback address a decision without attributing knowledge to its maker that was not yet available?
What the literature establishes
Jonathan Baron and John C. Hershey (1988, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) demonstrated experimentally that a decision's outcome influences assessments of its quality, even when the information available at the time of the choice remains identical. A favourable outcome can therefore make the reasoning appear better than an unfavourable one. For feedback, these findings suggest distinguishing the evaluation of the decision-making process from the evaluation of its consequences.
Outcomes also change how the past is interpreted
Baruch Fischhoff (1975, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance) showed that knowing an outcome retrospectively changes estimates of its probability and the relevance attributed to earlier information. This hindsight bias is distinct from outcome bias: it makes an event seem more predictable once it has occurred. In a feedback conversation, the risk is then to describe a signal as obvious when it was not obvious at the time of action.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that fair feedback should ignore outcomes; that would go too far. Outcomes remain essential for identifying non-conformities, protecting customers and revising methods. The distinction is not to treat an adverse consequence as sufficient proof of flawed reasoning, or success as automatic validation of the method. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What these findings cannot promise
These studies concern experimental judgements, not the effectiveness of feedback training in a precision workshop. They do not demonstrate that a conversation framework is enough to neutralise these biases or reduce defects. In practice, reconstructing the information available before a decision requires contemporaneous records: an account written after the incident may already incorporate knowledge of the outcome.
A practical check in Neuchâtel
For a Neuchâtel team working in microtechnology, watchmaking or precision microelectronics, SHR's « L'art du feedback » programme can use a review of adjustment or inspection decisions as an exercise. For each case, document separately the observed outcome, the information recorded before the decision and the reasoning discussed during feedback. During the next review cycle, measure the proportion of reports that support the decision assessment with at least one record predating its outcome, stating both the numerator and the denominator. This indicator checks the traceability of feedback, not yet its effect on production quality. To go further: explore the The Art of Feedback training in Neuchâtel, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: The Art of Feedback in Neuchâtel
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