Leadership means being willing to hear information that threatens your preferred answer.

Everyone arrives at a decision with a preferred answer, and information that threatens it registers as an obstacle rather than as data. Being able to sit with that discomfort and take the information seriously is most of what separates good judgment from confident judgment.

Before you finalize something, ask what would change your mind and then go look for it. Invite the objection from the person most likely to have it. What you learn is worth more than the comfort of having been right.