Risk Evaluation, Judgment, and Decision-making

Step 1: Evaluate the “Accident Potential” of a situation. Two forces overlap when most accidents occur:

• Objective factors: These are environmental hazards presented by the natural world, such as weather, darkness, falling rocks, moving water, lightning, snow, exposure, avalanche, cold, hot, or deep water, etc.
• Subjective factors: These are human characteristics that often play a role when accidents occur. They include: complacency, overconfidence, distraction, differing perception of risk, expectations and peer pressure, fatigue, stress, haste, and lack of competence.

The Accident potential: This is the interaction that occurs between these objective and subjective factors. For instance, acting in haste on slippery terrain can lead to an accident.

Step 2: Use and develop conservative judgment

Judgment is the logical reasoning we use in combination with past experience to help us decide what to do in a new situation. We develop judgment from 2 things working in concert: our past experience and personal reflection that leads to an insight or changed behavior that you carry forward with you. This continues in a cycle: Experience-reflect-gain insight-predict (fine-tune): experience-reflect- etc. Here are a few important points to remember about developing conservative judgment:

• Experience alone does not develop conservative judgment! Plenty of people take the same extreme risks over and over again. Reflection from one’s experience that leads to a modified future action is just as important as experience.
• We are going to make mistakes – the key is to learn from them (and not die from them).
• There are better and worse times to make mistakes – you don’t want to push your limits when you’re leading a group. Do this on your own time.
• It’s good for beginners to have simple clear “unbreakable” rules, such as: never climb a peak after noon in the mountains (because of lightning strike potential). Over time, your judgment will help you develop much more nuanced rules.
• Remember the organization you work for! Often you must follow policies set forth by your organization that may conflict with what your judgment tells you to do.
• Sometimes you don’t have the experience to use good judgment – in this case it is okay to not do something.
• The organization you work for will never get upset if you’re “too safe”, but people will get upset if you get in over your head.

Step 3: Use the risk equation to make a decision: Risk = Likelihood x Consequences of an accident occurring.

Also - use the “Post-Mortem Test”: Always ask yourself: If we get into an accident right here, could I justify my actions and decision-making to my supervisors when I debrief this back home?