I recently had an experience that caused me to step back and reevaluate the frame of reference under which individuals in my audience may be operating. I was doing a critical thinking workshop with a group ranging from proven senior executives to individuals their leadership teams had selected as high potential future leaders. As I stood on the podium and talked about the importance of having a defined and repeatable critical thinking process, I mentioned the value of skepticism as a tool to help strengthen our resolve that the critical thinking process we are utilizing is actually producing the best outcomes.

It was immediately obvious that one of the younger people in the room was very uncomfortable with my comment. I took a moment to ask her why she found it so troubling. Her response surprised me. She said she had been taught all her life that she should embrace all points of view equally and recognize that each person’s points of view are framed by their “own personal truth.” She also said she didn’t believe she could embrace skepticism because she didn’t want to be pessimistic. I must admit, I was a bit taken aback by her perspective.

If we are to develop a strong critical thinking process, we don’t have the luxury of embracing all points of view equally. We live in a time where information is more readily available than ever, but the sourcing and reliability of this information is more difficult to discern than ever before. We have focused for so many years on increasing the volume of what’s available to us that we may have lost perspective regarding the impact of this information on our day-to-day lives.

Most of us can easily relate to situations where our actions or interpretation of the information available produces an undesirable outcome. Who hasn’t had the experience of hearing that dreaded question of “what were you thinking?” You may have been asked this question by a person of influence in your life, such as a teacher or maybe a trusted friend, or you may have just looked in the mirror and asked yourself this question.

In any case, it’s probably not the most useful question you could be asking. As a society, we would be doing ourselves a great favor to be more skeptical and spend more time asking the question of “how was I thinking?” rather than “what was I thinking.” It’s a small distinction with profound implications. Developing a stronger and more reliable process for our thinking may be one of the greatest gifts we could bestow upon ourselves.

There’s a tremendous difference between a skeptic, a cynic, and a pessimist.

  • A skeptic is someone who is reluctant to believe something until it is definitively proven;
  • A cynic is someone who refuses to believe;
  • A pessimist is someone who has given up on believing.

Skepticism is something most, if not all of us, practice or use as a tool at some time or another, but it is still often confused or conflated with cynicism. Actually, it’s neither cynical nor pessimistic.

As applied to critical thinking, skepticism is just one part of a systematic process of applying the scientific method to a specific but broad range of areas.

From a critical thinking standpoint, the view of skeptics is not that these alternative viewpoints are not… and cannot be true… their view is that they are yet unproven. In some cases, the likelihood of supportive evidence for specific topics is verging on nil, while others may have just a grain of truth. Other aspects still may hold many worthwhile aspects that, as yet, are still to be fully and scientifically understood or endorsed.

What you ultimately decide to embrace, believe, or incorporate in your day-to-day is ultimately up to you, but you will be doing yourself a great disservice if you don’t look at everything that’s being presented to you in your critical thinking process.