Feedback: should managers have to justify their assessments?
In Zurich's financial services, insurance, technology companies and European headquarters of international groups, feedback can inform career decisions. The management question is precise: does reviewing a manager's reasoning before the conversation improve the assessment, or merely encourage a more skilful justification?
What the literature establishes
Philip E. Tetlock (1983, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) provides experimental evidence that anticipating a requirement to justify a judgement can make reasoning more complex under certain conditions. This accountability involves more than signing off an assessment: it means having to explain how it was reached. For feedback, the relevant hypothesis therefore concerns how the judgement is prepared, not just how the message is phrased.
The audience for the justification changes the mechanism
Jennifer S. Lerner and Philip E. Tetlock (1999, Psychological Bulletin), in a review of the literature, show that the effects of accountability depend in part on the audience's expectations and when accountability is introduced. When that audience's position is known, judgement may shift towards it rather than become more searching. Being answerable for one's reasoning is therefore not the same as having to defend an expected conclusion.
The premature conclusion
One might conclude that every piece of feedback should require a superior's approval. The cited research does not support that prescription: adding hierarchical scrutiny can also strengthen conformity. The useful distinction is between a review that asks, “How did you reach this assessment?” and an approval process that asks, “Does it match what we expect?” (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot promise
These studies concern judgement and accountability, not the effectiveness of a feedback process in Zurich companies. More complex reasoning guarantees neither a more accurate assessment nor a better-received conversation. In practice, a justification form can also become an administrative exercise if it is completed after the decision has been settled.
A practical check in Zurich
As part of SHR's “L'art du feedback” programme, a Zurich pilot could introduce a reasoning review before a set of comparable feedback conversations, with the reviewer asking for facts, criteria and uncertainties without stating a preferred assessment. The main measure would be the proportion of assessments substantively changed between the initial and reviewed versions, with a documented reason distinguishing factual input, clarification of the criterion and simple hierarchical alignment. Keeping both versions would make those changes verifiable, without treating their frequency as proof of accuracy. To go further: explore the The Art of Feedback training in Zurich in the canton of Zurich, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: The Art of Feedback in Zurich
- the art of feedback
- Zurich
- research
- training zurich