Nothing new here, but sometimes it’s worth having a reminder about the corrosive effects of making assumptions. Assumptions are easy to make. I had to make two very rash assumptions last week before I became aware of what I was doing. Both involved me thinking that I had all the answers about other people. Never mind that I didn’t bother to talk with them first, it was just easier to put my own subjective frames around highly incomplete pictures.

I’m reminded of something Soren Kierkegaard wrote:

The majority of people are subjective toward themselves and objective toward all others, terribly objective sometimes, but the real task is, in fact, to be objective toward oneself and subjective toward all others.

I was fortunate that it only took two minor instances for me to remember this and that these assumptions didn’t lead to any true harm in my business relationships. I haven’t been as lucky in the past. 

Dealing with our own assumptions takes a vigilant awareness of our own thinking, which isn’t easy in our go-go everyday business experience. It requires us to be more curious about the world and people around us.

To deal with my own blindspots for making assumptions, I’ve written two questions on the whiteboard directly in front of my computer monitor to challenge me:

• What am I accepting as fact and not questioning?
• What other questions do I need to ask?

Kathy Sierra has some ideas on how to give our assumptions the “sniff test.” What about you? How do you deal with assumptions in your own life and work?