Hindsight is an unfair metric

Introduction

There was a saying in my unit which we, as youngsters, heard lots of times during Counter-Terror Operations.

“The map always looks clearer after the patrol returns.”

Leaders at every level know the feeling. You make a decision with the information you have at that moment. Be it time pressure, incomplete intelligence, and imperfect clarity. Days later, someone looks at the outcome and says, “You should have done this instead.”

That, in essence, is hindsight. And while hindsight is often presented as wisdom, it can easily become one of the most unfair and corrosive metrics to judge decision-making. It gives us the illusion that we always had enough data to get it right. We didn’t.

The real question is not whether a past decision was perfect. The real question is, given the information available then, was it the best decision that could have been made?

Decision Making: Choices Under Constraint

Decision making is not an act of fortune-telling. It’s a process of judgment under constraint. You never have all the information. You never have unlimited time. And you will certainly not have perfect clarity about how stakeholders will respond.

Think about some of the big calls you’ve made. Whether it was hiring someone, investing in a project, or even choosing when to exit a failing initiative. At the time, you weighed what you knew. The market looked promising, the candidate seemed competent, or the data suggested persistence might pay off. You acted in good faith with what you had.

Every decision has two ingredients.

1. Information available at that moment – facts, figures, signals, intuition.

2. The filters you apply – your experience, biases, and the urgency of the situation.

And then, you act.

That action may later look naïve, brilliant, or somewhere in between. But the only fair way to assess it is to step back into that moment in time, not forward into the luxury of what came after.

Hindsight: The Trap of After-Knowledge

Hindsight is seductive because it feels like clarity. Once the outcome is known, the path leading to it seems obvious. Psychologists call this the hindsight bias (the “I-knew-it-all-along” effect). But in truth, very few people ever knew it, they just remember it differently once they see the outcome.

In behavioral sciences, this is one of the most damaging illusions. It erases the fog of uncertainty that existed at the time of choice. It allows us to rewrite history in our heads, imagining that the better option was sitting there glowing in neon lights, waiting for us to pick it.

But it wasn’t. Hindsight equips us with more information than was ever available in real time. That’s why it is an unfair metric to judge decisions by. It stacks the deck against the decision maker.

The Problems Hindsight Brings

When hindsight takes over, three dangerous things usually happen.

1. Blame replaces learning. Instead of analyzing how to improve prediction, teams start looking for scapegoats. “Who should have seen this?” becomes a louder question than “How do we better anticipate next time?” This blame game kills ownership and responsibility, because nobody wants to stick their neck out again.

2. Control gets lost. The illusion of hindsight makes us believe we could have prevented every bad outcome. But life doesn’t work that way. Risk is inherent. By believing every failure was avoidable, we overcorrect, become risk-averse, and stop innovating. Instead of gaining control, we lose it.

3. Growth gets stunted. Organizations obsessed with hindsight judgments build cultures of fear. People delay decisions, push responsibility upwards, or overanalyze until opportunities pass. They prefer to be safe than to be wrong. Ironically, this avoidance creates the very stagnation leaders fear.

This is why hindsight, if not handled carefully, does not sharpen foresight. It dulls it.

The Way Forward: What We Should Do Instead

If hindsight is unfair, what’s the fairer way to evaluate decisions?

1. Separate outcome from process. A bad outcome does not always mean a bad decision, just as a good outcome does not always mean a good one. Luck, timing, and external shocks play roles. Evaluate the quality of the decision-making process, not just the scoreboard. Did the team gather the best available data? Did they consider alternatives? Did they weigh risks honestly?

2. Learn in advance, not in reverse. Use post-decision reviews not to assign blame but to build predictive capability. Instead of saying, “You should have seen it,” ask, “What early signals did we miss, and how can we spot them next time?” This keeps the lens forward-facing.

3. Normalize uncertainty. Leaders must remind their teams that uncertainty is part of life and business. The expectation of omniscience is unfair. The expectation of constant learning is fair. When people accept that no decision will ever be perfect, they start making better, bolder calls.

4. Document the “why” at the time of decision. A practical tool: whenever a major decision is taken, write down the reasons, data points, and constraints that existed. Six months later, when hindsight tries to paint everything black-and-white, revisit that log. It will ground the evaluation in reality, not in reconstructed memory.

5. Shift from blame to accountability. Accountability means owning the process and improving it for the future. Blame means punishing the person for not predicting the unknowable. The former builds resilience. The latter builds silence.

Conclusion

Hindsight feels powerful. It seduces us into believing that outcomes were inevitable, when in truth, they were never certain. It tempts us into blame rather than growth. It makes us lose control instead of gaining it.

The better path is to judge decisions by the integrity of their process, not just the result. To accept uncertainty as the price of progress. And to turn every imperfect decision into a sharper tool for the future, not a weapon for the past.

Because the truth is simple - every decision is made in the fog of “now.” Hindsight lives in the clarity of “then.” And if we don’t learn to respect that difference, we will keep punishing ourselves for not being prophets when all we were ever asked to be was leaders.