Bias in the boardroom: Good or bad?

Examine your biases

Suppose you’re interviewing a new candidate for the C-suite and your gut is telling you ‘no’ but you don’t know why. Ask yourself the following questions to try to identify the reasons:

• Is it something about their CV (perhaps their standards of grammar don’t match your very exacting ones?)
• Is it the way they speak about a previous business transformation?
• Could it be a physical bias?
• Do they remind you of a former colleague whom you disliked or clashed with?
• Are they someone else’s preferred candidate?
• Is the immediate environment distracting you?
• Or is it simply that you’re having a bad day and would rather not be doing this right now?

Next steps: investigate your bias

You cannot yet voice your concerns because you don’t have a legitimate reason to dismiss the candidate. You need to take those awkward gut feelings into account, but not without first finding the data to challenge them. That means you need to look for evidence – but rather than search for red flags that confirm your bias, look instead for reasons why you may be wrong. This requires self-exploration: analyzing your own decision-making process and the steps taken to reach it. For example:

• In the instance of a ‘red flag’ candidate, go against the grain of your pre-judgment and look for stories in their previous business transformations that suggest your bias is unfounded (as opposed to instances that support it).
• If they’ve made investments in industries or regions you deem unstable, look for precedents and returns, and for good press that might shed a different light on the industries and regions.

Now decide…

If you find the evidence, separate your former opinion from fact and accept the findings. And, if you don’t find anything that disproves your bias, use it as an example of how bias can be one of the most valuable intuitions for board members.