There is always a reason behind the process of shortening a decision, and where the mechanism seems inappropriate the trainer must explore why it was used.
If a trainer identifies a shortcut as part of problem, then they must first establish whether that shortcut is routinely used in similar situations. If so then the trainer must uncover why it failed in that case. The shortcut may be generally inappropriate, and the training
scenario may expose the reason to the crew. However it is likely that the situation was not exactly as perceived by the crew, and the trainer can facilitate some learning about why that shortcut did not work in that situation. The trainer may also discuss ways to add resilience to an inevitable shortcut situation. For example if a crew make a shortcut to allow time to prioritise something else, then putting in place a review or a barrier to error may be appropriate. One can see that a trainer who simply states that using the shortcut was inappropriate is at best missing a good learning opportunity, and at worst re-directing crew resources artificially without considering the unintended consequences.
CAP 737 Section A, Part 1, Chapter 9, Sub-chapter 2: Quicker decision making mechanisms and shortcuts
If a crew makes a choice that appears unwise, they have usually done so because they assessed their chosen option as having greater utility than the other options. The trainer must find out why that option had higher perceived utility for the crew, not why the crew made the wrong choice. There is a subtle difference in approach.
When debriefing such an event it is worth recalling that the utility of a choice is formed of both probability of success and the worth of the choice. The crew may have assessed an option as being likely to work, but it did not work. A common underlying assumption is that because a chosen option did not work, the crew could have known that at the time, or have been able to work it out. This is not always true. Once a scenario has played out, and the consequences of taking a particular option become apparent, the perception of utility will unconsciously change due to hindsight bias (in both the trainer and the crew). If the option worked, the utility will be perceived as higher than it was at the time, whereas if it fails the utility will be viewed as lower than it really was. The trainer needs to be aware of this bias in themselves and not treat the situation as having been more obvious than it was at the time, or the crew’s choice as being more correct or more incorrect than it was at the time. A 90% probability will fail 10% of the time. The trainer must recognise this rather than assuming that if something failed then it had been unlikely to work to begin with.
Sometimes the right option (at the time) can subsequently fail. The trainer should avoid the temptation of assessing the decision purely on its consequences later on.
Many risk-based decisions taken in flight have an unfortunate characteristic when looked at from the perspective of someone outside the process, or in hindsight. Sometime the chosen option appeared to the crew to represent the least risky choice at the time, but appears to the observer to have been a risky choice in hindsight. The trainer or observer can overcome this natural hindsight bias to try to establish whether the crew felt the decision to be a relatively low risk choice at the time, and why. The level of risk accepted by a crew is not necessarily correlated with the level of risk as seen from outside the decision. Asking what made an option appear less risky than others is usually a more fruitful approach than asking the crew why they took a risk. As a bonus, this approach shows the crew that the trainer is trying to understand the process.
The session debrief is usually the best time to dig into a decision, with the obvious
disadvantage of memory limitations, given everything else that may have happened in the meantime. Scientists use various techniques to attempt to illicit information about
decisions, and the trainer can learn from these. Some effective questions to try to break into a decision process after the event are:
What made the decision appear to be right at that time?
This type of question aligns the questioner and the crew, as opposed to creating conflict. It shows the crew that the trainer understands implicitly that the decision was made for a good reason in terms of informational assessment.
This type of question tries to discover what the future assessment was, and why it appeared to be the right choice of action.
How confident were you that the decision was good at the time?
This gives a clue as to the nature of risk in the decision. The decision may look risky to the trainer, but may have appeared to the crew to be low risk at the time.
After the decision was taken, what else occurred that made things go wrong?
This type of question helps the trainer and the crew to align their
perceptions of the situational variables that impacted upon the decision. The trainer can then decide to what extent those factors were
reasonably predictable, or linked to the decision process.
What would happen to a crew in your position who chose to do [a different option]?
This gives the crew an opportunity to explain why they did not choose other specific options, and may enlighten the trainer to their decision making process. It is too easy to make the assumption that alternatives would have worked better, without testing them or considering them fully. Having discovered why the crew assessed the situation in the way they did, chose the action they chose, and rejected the alternatives that they rejected, the trainer will be in a strong position to give realistic feedback and assessment of what occurred.
CAP 737 Section A, Part 1, Chapter 9, Sub-chapter 3: Very fast (intuitive) decision-making
SECTION A, PART 1, CHAPTER 9, SUB-CHAPTER 3