Critical Decision Making

1 Confidence 1. How do you justify your thinking to someone who questions your
conclusions? 2. Do you ever think aloud, or do you wait to speak until you have your ideas firmly in place? Why? 3. In
what situations are you easily swayed from your thinking by someone else’s opinion? Contextual Perspective 1. Describe
how you approach an ambiguous situation. 2. How often, and under what circumstances, do you ask questions that start
with “But what if…?” or “It depends…?” 3. When you tell a story. do you tend to include background information, or do you
keep more strictly to the point? Why? Creativity 1. Describe something you did in the past month that required innovation
thinking. Why do you think it was innovative? 2. Do you tend to approach a situation the way other peopte do, or are your
interpretations often different from others? Give an example. 3. If your boss told you to “think outside the box,” how would
you change your usual thinking process? Flexibility 1. When your practice routines are interrupted, how does your thinking
help you adapt? 2. How much of your mind is open to change and how much is closed? 3. What has to occur for you to
change your mind about something important? Inquisitiveness 1. What is your motivation for questioning information
provided by an authoritative source, such as a person, an article, or a book? 2. On a continuum from extremely curious to
not curious, where would you place yourself and why? 3. How do you distinguish the thinking differences between
information seeking and inquisitiveness? Intellectual Integrity 1. How do you deal with ideas and information that conflict
with your thinking? 2. How do you feel about debate on issues, as opposed to having everyone agree? Why? 3. When you
feel strongly about something do you also try to see the situation from the opposite point of view? How do you get your
thinking to achieve that? Intuition 1. How often do you have “gut feelings, a “six sense,” or a premonition? 2. Describe how
your hunches emerge in your thinking. 3. How do you explain your intuitive behavior to those who might question your
choices? Open-mindedness 1. How do you recognize when you have made assumptions, as opposed to basing your
conclusions on data collected with your five senses (sight, sound, touch, smell, taste)? 2. What are your assumptions
(about cultures, heaith, iliness, time, eating. exercise, economic status, education, and so forth), and how do they affect
the questions that you ask or don’t ask, or the conclusions that you draw? 3. Why would others describe you as