How do you tell the difference between careful deliberation and avoidance?

Prudence is one of the four cardinal virtues, alongside justice, fortitude and temperance. It is often confused with caution, but they are not the same thing. Prudence can fail in two directions. On one side is precipitation: rushing ahead without thinking, or without knowing all the facts. On the other side is negligence: failing to move ahead once every side of a situation or a problem has already been analyzed.

More often than not, we face exactly this kind of situation, in our personal life and in our professional life. Having prudence means knowing the right amount of thought to put into something. It should be enough to weigh the cost and the consequences of a bad decision, and also the cost and the consequences of waiting too long to decide. Both carry a cost. Both have consequences.

So how do we do it?

When the answer is not obvious, one thing I always use, and tell my mentees, is to sleep on it. Sleeping on it does not mean that the next day we will have more certainty about what to do. It means we will have more clarity. We will see all the aspects of the situation more clearly, and the steps we need to take to close it, solve the problem and move ahead.

Then comes the weighing. Weighing does not mean finding an option with no downside. Most of the time, every path has a price. This is when you weigh what you gain against what you risk, in every area of life. Whatever you stand to lose by acting, you need to see whether it is equal to or less than what you lose by not acting. You also need to ask who will be affected, and whether those people are prepared for, or at least aware of, what is going to happen.

Many of the decisions we face in life are easier than they seem. We already know the facts, or we can collect them quickly, or we can trust a well-trained instinct. Some decisions are so clearly moral, truly moral and not just what we prefer, that there is no discussion. The price and the number of people affected don’t matter, because it is the right thing to do. That is the easy part. The difficult part is the gray area, when you need to look at a single decision from many angles and sit with it before you can make the best choice.

This leads to a second reflection: how much counsel should you seek? It depends on who you are in the situation and what role you play. The more people you consult, the bigger and more exposed the situation becomes. Sometimes a very small group of trusted people is more than enough. Other times, you need to involve more people. Either way, this is a second decision inside the first one. You need to make the decision, weigh what is at stake, and decide who you will involve. Every person you bring in becomes part of the decision and shares its weight. If the responsibility is yours alone, sharing it is not always generous. It can mean placing a burden on someone who had no part in the situation in the first place.

Perhaps this is where the difference becomes clearest. Careful deliberation gathers what it needs, and then it decides. Avoidance keeps gathering more time, more opinions and more people, so that the moment of deciding never has to arrive.