We have access to more answers than ever before.
Ask AI a question and, within seconds, it can give you options.
It can summarize the research.
Compare scenarios.
Identify risks.
Generate possibilities you hadn’t considered.
And sometimes, that’s exactly what we need.
But more answers don’t necessarily make consequential decisions easier.
Sometimes they make the real challenge more visible:
We still have to choose.
Some Decisions aren’t Information Problems
Imagine you’re considering a new leadership role.
AI could help you research the organization, compare compensation, analyze the job description, identify potential risks and generate a very impressive list of pros and cons.
Useful? Absolutely. But then come the questions AI can’t answer for you.
How much are you willing to trade for the opportunity?
Are the demands of the role compatible with the life you want to live?
Which risks are you willing to take?
What matters enough that you’re not willing to compromise it?
And if the outcome is uncertain, which decision are you willing to stand behind?
At some point, gathering information gives way to exercising judgment.
The Workplace May Require More of That Judgment
The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 offers an interesting picture of what’s ahead.
Employers ranked analytical thinking as the most important core skill, followed by resilience, flexibility and agility, with leadership and social influence third.
The report also estimates that 39% of workers’ existing skill sets will be transformed or become outdated between 2025 and 2030.
That’s a lot of change.
And change creates decisions.
What should I learn?
Where should I invest my time?
Which opportunity should I pursue?
When should I adapt?
What should I hold onto?
AI can help us explore those questions.
It can give us more information, more possibilities and perhaps even help us see something we’ve missed.
But it cannot remove our responsibility for what we do with that information.
More answers. Less certainty.
That’s the tension I keep coming back to.
For a long time, access to information was part of the problem.
Now we may increasingly find ourselves with more answers and less certainty about which one to choose.
That’s one of the reasons I developed the Highroads Decision Process.
Not to tell people what decision to make.
And certainly not to promise certainty where certainty doesn’t exist.
The process provides a structure for working through the decision:
Clarify the Decision. Identify Your Values. Recognize Reality. Consider the Trade-offs. Take the Next Aligned Step.
AI can be enormously useful throughout that process. It can help us gather information, explore possibilities, test assumptions and see things we might have missed.
But there is a point where the analysis ends and responsibility begins.
What matters here? What am I willing to trade? Who will be affected?
What can I stand behind? And what will I do next?
Those answers still belong to us.
AI can remove unnecessary complexity. It cannot remove responsibility for consequential decisions.
And perhaps that’s not a limitation of AI.
Perhaps it’s one of the responsibilities of leadership.
Read more: AI Has More Answers, But Leaders Still Have to Choose.