Happy Tuesday!

Every Tuesday I'd like to offer strategies for the week ahead and a thought to fuel your action.

The more we know, the more blind spots we create.

It's counterintuitive.

We think that as we gain more information, through learning or years of experience, our ability to notice where we lack understanding rises.

But it's the opposite.

There's research on this. It's called the bias blind spot. It's our ability to spot the flaws in how other people think while staying blind to those same flaws in ourselves.

The part that got me is that the blind spot doesn't shrink as you get smarter. It grows. Cognitive ability doesn't reduce it. Test scores don't reduce it. Reflective thinking doesn't reduce it. If anything, the higher the cognitive ability, the larger the blind spot.

We are a credentialed business. The CFA, the CFP, the years in the seat. We treat all of it as protection against being wrong. The research says it's the opposite of protection.

It's as if we get better and better at identifying the blind spots in others, while continuing to get more blind to our own.

And to overcome the blind spots that learning and experience create, we have to venture into the uncomfortable.

We must challenge what we know. Not to prove that we are right, but to explore why we might be wrong.

The reason highly intelligent people struggle to identify their blind spots is that they have a great ability to rationalize. And less of an ability to be objective.

I'm not saying I'm that intelligent, but I have become highly aware of my ability to rationalize. And I catch myself doing it more and more.

For me the process goes like this.

I have an opinion on something and I have shared that opinion with others. I've also let that opinion, and the insight behind it, drive decisions on the initiatives and strategies we have implemented. We have put in a lot of work going down this path and I understand it really well.

Then a new piece of information comes out and challenges the approach.

Changing direction now would be hard. Most of what I have believed is still right. I can only see a few areas where this new information might be right. So I spend my time building the case for why it doesn't pertain to us. And I move forward.

And right there is my blind spot.

My fear is being exposed as not being smart, or as not having a strong enough basis for my initial view. So I rationalize the new information in a way that keeps my current position looking "sophisticated."

I was vulnerable there with a real time example, but I know that I'm not the only one who has experienced it. We all have. Whether it is professionally or personally, we all struggle with the concept of being wrong.

Another challenge we face in this industry is that we tend to stay close to people in our own industry. We read the same newsletters. We attend the same conferences. We use the same custodians.

This allows us to believe that we are sharing information and growing each other. The reality is that we are building echo chambers.

Stepping out and saying that what the herd believes is wrong, and that this new way is right, is extremely difficult. Many times, those ideas just get shot down.

What happens is that one person reads something in newsletter A. Then sees a keynote about it at conference B. Then a peer brings up the same concept in a peer group session.

Now that concept is believed to be accurate, given the multiple channels it has been discussed in. But the reality is that it is no stronger than it was in the single article where it started. The idea gained volume by being repeated. It did not gain evidence.

Nobody has gone back to find where that opinion came from, why it was formed, and what it might be missing.

This isn't just an industry quirk. It's the same failure behind one of the biggest intelligence failures in modern history.

In the lead up to the Iraq war, analysts were confident that the weapons programs were active. That confidence came from multiple reports arriving through multiple channels. Different agencies, both here and overseas, all pointing the same direction.

The channels weren't independent.

They traced back to a single source, a fabricated one, codenamed Curveball. The same account had been repackaged and re-reported until it came back to the analysts through separate pipelines. They believed they were reading four confirmations. They were reading one lie four times.

The commission that audited the failure afterward had a name for it. Circular reporting.

So when four different research shops and your favorite newsletter all say the same thing in the same week, the question isn't whether they agree. The question is who they all read first.

The idea of challenging what we know and identifying our own blind spots sounds reasonable. In practice it is highly challenging. It makes it twice as hard to learn new information and act on new insights, because now we have to look at it from multiple angles. And this is exactly why we have so many blind spots.

It's a natural human cheat code. Find the easiest path to understand something and then move on. We already carry too much cognitive load to strain it any further, so we look for the simplest path available.

And that simple path tends to be the same one every time. Strengthen what we know. Dismiss anything that challenges what we know. Wait for new information to show up in multiple channels before adopting it. Let others do the work, then act on their output.

The things I write about, and the things others write about, are based on research we do. We try to distill that research through the lens we have and provide something feasible for our audience to know and learn. That is a true benefit of effective thought leaders.

And even being a thought leader, my challenge to you is to take a topic that I write about, or that someone else writes about, and go deeper. Go research that topic on your own. The lens you view that research through is what allows you to create your own opinion.

Because ultimately, thought leaders should be starting points, not finish lines. Our goal is to open your mind to new ideas and new concepts. Not to show you the finish line. The finish line comes through your own research, crafting your own views, and ultimately incorporating those insights in your own way to learn what works and what doesn't.

Thought leadership is about inspiration. The real way to execute on that inspiration is by learning through doing, and that starts with going to the source and building your own view.

My biggest concern for our industry, and for any industry for that matter, is the lack of outside influence in evolving the way the industry works and serves.

This is the reason that disruptors turn industries upside down.

It happens because the echo chamber gets bigger, stronger and louder.

And the way out of that is to start building our own opinions by going to the source and exploring it ourselves. But more importantly, it's about challenging what we know and why we believe what we know to be true. Just because we know it, just because it has worked, just because we have had some success, that doesn't make our blind spots any fewer.

The hard work is in the exploring. Exploring why we believe things to be true in our industry. And exploring what other industries believe to be true that we don't, and why.

So here's where to start.

There's a body of research on how to actually break the grip of what we already believe. Most of what we assume works, doesn't. Training doesn't work. Awareness campaigns don't work. Reminders don't work. Knowing about your blind spots does almost nothing to remove them.

One thing worked. Writing down the exact opposite of your conclusion, and then making the case for it. Not saying it out loud in a meeting. Writing it. Naming the specific data points that would support the other view.

Before your next big decision, whether that's an allocation call, a technology choice, or a strategy you've already committed to, answer four questions in writing:

What does not fit our current thesis?

Are we anchoring to a prior cycle or to an old way of doing things?

Who is the most confident voice in this room, and are we deferring to them?

If we had to make the opposite call today, what would justify it?

Most firms will say they already do this. Some will run through it in ten minutes and move on. That's playing the game, and it has no value. But if you actually commit to answering them, one of two things happens. You adjust your thesis. Or you walk out with far more conviction than you walked in with.

Either one is a win.

The FutureProof Advisor is one that doesn't get comfortable in the echo chamber. Rather they go and explore outside. And they challenge what they know, constantly, on the inside.

This is how we evolve how we work. And how we serve our clients. It's the way we create our future as opposed to disruption determining it for us.

The best is ahead!

-Matt