The Science of Fearless Decision Making (Live Webinar)
Overview
Good judgement may be the most valued skill in the world. Our biggest concern when faced with difficult choices is the daunting sense we might be wrong. This is especially true in an age of misinformation, polarization, exponential technological change and artificial intelligence. We’re bombarded daily with opaque, inconsistent and contradictory information that swamps, confuses and even angers us. When we don’t understand, we tend to imagine worst-case scenarios. This results in fear, and fear leads to bad decisions. Yet we have access to more data, expertise and analytical capability than any generation before us. The challenge is no longer finding information. It’s determining what matters, what questions we should ask, what evidence we can trust, and when human judgement must prevail. How do we make better choices and prevent unintended, even disastrous consequences? This course provides the answers.
This seminar is eligible towards
The Redefining Leadership Certificate Program
CPABC is pleased to present the Redefining Leadership Certificate Program. This six-part program is designed primarily for middle and senior mangers who are seeking to ascend to a higher level of executive responsibility in today’s transformative, paradoxical, confusing business world. Lessons learned in a less frenetic business environment no longer work in today’s increasingly volatile, disruptive, unpredictable, hyper-competitive marketplace. Leadership must evolve and adapt to effectively deal with rapidly changing circumstances and black-swan events, which is why it’s continually redefined. The six seminars are:
- From Manager to Leader
- Strategic Foresight, Planning and Modeling
- Building Innovation Capability
- The Science of Fearless Decision Making
- Understanding the Human Condition
- Why Successful Companies Fail (and how to fix them)
Each seminar can be taken as a stand-alone course, but in order to qualify for the certificate, participants are required to complete all six titles. Titles will be offered across our Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter programs.
Course Description
Real-world decision making requires selecting the right data, an awareness of the caveats, and an understanding of the tradeoffs. Our innate biases, thinking traps and presumptions produce poor judgements. AI can’t eliminate those. It can expose alternatives and help us navigate complexity, but it can also introduce errors, false confidence and persuasive answers that appear more reliable than they really are. It might estimate probabilities but can’t determine what decision thresholds we can accept with confidence. As human and artificial intelligence become intertwined, the challenge is not to surrender judgement but rather to decide how each can make the other better.
Content
- Judgement: Why smart people make poor decisions
- The batting average of successful decision makers
- Fatal flaws that shorten a decision maker’s tenure
- Simplification vs. complexity: The old world vs. the new
- AI and decision making: Capabilities, limitations, myths
- Hybrid intelligence: Designing human/AI collaboration
- Diagnostic tools: Systems thinking and scenario planning
- Separating signals from noise and seeing the bigger picture
- Assembling and leading the right decision-making team
- The bubble of ignorance and the iceberg of innocence
- Cognitive biases and thinking traps that impair judgement
- Counterfactual and probabilistic thinking: The ingredients
- The influence of diversity, trust, safety and inclusion
- Decision-making tools: Trade-offs and consequences
- Getting good advice: Caveats, options and better questions
- When AI gets it right – and when it gets it badly wrong
- Case studies: Crisis decision making – what would you do?
- Risk tolerance and assessment: De-risking and reframing
- What to do when you’re not sure what you should do
While no pre-requisite is required to attend this seminar, it contains 0.5 hour of supplementary reading that must be completed. Note that the live instructional portion is 5 hours. Participants who complete this supplementary work may report the full 5.5 hours as verifiable CPD. The PD seminar will auto-populate the total eligible CPD hours on Online Services, including the supplementary time. If a participant does not complete this, they must reduce the reported CPD hours accordingly.
Course Dates & Registration
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DR. JIM MURRAY, Hon BA, MA, MSc, EdD is CEO of optimal solutions international, a firm dedicated to helping people and organizations achieve their full potential. Jim has been teaching for us and other CPA jurisdictions for 44 years. His students have called him “a man of brilliance” and his courses have altered careers and changed lives. He has been nationally honoured by the university community for “excellence in the design and delivery of life-long learning”. DR. JIM MURRAY, Hon BA, MA, MSc, EdD is CEO of optimal solutions international, a firm dedicated to helping people and organizations achieve their full potential. Jim has been teaching for us and other CPA jurisdictions for 44 years. His students have called him “a man of brilliance” and his courses have altered careers and changed lives. He has been nationally honoured by the university community for “excellence in the design and delivery of life-long learning”. DR. JIM MURRAY, Hon BA, MA, MSc, EdD is CEO of optimal solutions international, a firm dedicated to helping people and organizations achieve their full potential. Jim has been teaching for us and other CPA jurisdictions for 44 years. His students have called him “a man of brilliance” and his courses have altered careers and changed lives. He has been nationally honoured by the university community for “excellence in the design and delivery of life-long learning”.Improving Your Virtual Learning Experience
Live webinars have varying levels of expected interaction, with some requiring microphone and camera capabilities to support a proper learning experience – please email pdreg@bccpa.ca if you have concerns.
In general, we encourage participants to have their cameras turned on to enhance their virtual learning experience. This practice promotes a stronger connection with the instructor and fellow participants, and fosters improved communication and collaboration.
Live Webinar FAQs can be found here.
Registration terms and conditions, including the cancellation policy can be found here. If you require further assistance, please contact the PD Department.
- 5.5
- CPD Hours
- 0
- Ethics Hours
- 0
- AML Hours
- 9
- Credits
Starting April 1, 2026, a 2.1% fee will be applied to all credit card transactions. Learn more about this fee and how it relates to PD registrations.
The Science of Fearless Decision Making (Live Webinar)
- 5.5
- CPD Hours
- 0
- Ethics Hours
- 0
- AML Hours
- 9
- Credits
Overview
Good judgement may be the most valued skill in the world. Our biggest concern when faced with difficult choices is the daunting sense we might be wrong. This is especially true in an age of misinformation, polarization, exponential technological change and artificial intelligence. We’re bombarded daily with opaque, inconsistent and contradictory information that swamps, confuses and even angers us. When we don’t understand, we tend to imagine worst-case scenarios. This results in fear, and fear leads to bad decisions. Yet we have access to more data, expertise and analytical capability than any generation before us. The challenge is no longer finding information. It’s determining what matters, what questions we should ask, what evidence we can trust, and when human judgement must prevail. How do we make better choices and prevent unintended, even disastrous consequences? This course provides the answers.
This seminar is eligible towards
The Redefining Leadership Certificate Program
CPABC is pleased to present the Redefining Leadership Certificate Program. This six-part program is designed primarily for middle and senior mangers who are seeking to ascend to a higher level of executive responsibility in today’s transformative, paradoxical, confusing business world. Lessons learned in a less frenetic business environment no longer work in today’s increasingly volatile, disruptive, unpredictable, hyper-competitive marketplace. Leadership must evolve and adapt to effectively deal with rapidly changing circumstances and black-swan events, which is why it’s continually redefined. The six seminars are:
- From Manager to Leader
- Strategic Foresight, Planning and Modeling
- Building Innovation Capability
- The Science of Fearless Decision Making
- Understanding the Human Condition
- Why Successful Companies Fail (and how to fix them)
Each seminar can be taken as a stand-alone course, but in order to qualify for the certificate, participants are required to complete all six titles. Titles will be offered across our Spring/Summer and Fall/Winter programs.
Course Description
Real-world decision making requires selecting the right data, an awareness of the caveats, and an understanding of the tradeoffs. Our innate biases, thinking traps and presumptions produce poor judgements. AI can’t eliminate those. It can expose alternatives and help us navigate complexity, but it can also introduce errors, false confidence and persuasive answers that appear more reliable than they really are. It might estimate probabilities but can’t determine what decision thresholds we can accept with confidence. As human and artificial intelligence become intertwined, the challenge is not to surrender judgement but rather to decide how each can make the other better.
Content
- Judgement: Why smart people make poor decisions
- The batting average of successful decision makers
- Fatal flaws that shorten a decision maker’s tenure
- Simplification vs. complexity: The old world vs. the new
- AI and decision making: Capabilities, limitations, myths
- Hybrid intelligence: Designing human/AI collaboration
- Diagnostic tools: Systems thinking and scenario planning
- Separating signals from noise and seeing the bigger picture
- Assembling and leading the right decision-making team
- The bubble of ignorance and the iceberg of innocence
- Cognitive biases and thinking traps that impair judgement
- Counterfactual and probabilistic thinking: The ingredients
- The influence of diversity, trust, safety and inclusion
- Decision-making tools: Trade-offs and consequences
- Getting good advice: Caveats, options and better questions
- When AI gets it right – and when it gets it badly wrong
- Case studies: Crisis decision making – what would you do?
- Risk tolerance and assessment: De-risking and reframing
- What to do when you’re not sure what you should do
While no pre-requisite is required to attend this seminar, it contains 0.5 hour of supplementary reading that must be completed. Note that the live instructional portion is 5 hours. Participants who complete this supplementary work may report the full 5.5 hours as verifiable CPD. The PD seminar will auto-populate the total eligible CPD hours on Online Services, including the supplementary time. If a participant does not complete this, they must reduce the reported CPD hours accordingly.
Course Dates & Registration
DR. JIM MURRAY, Hon BA, MA, MSc, EdD is CEO of optimal solutions international, a firm dedicated to helping people and organizations achieve their full potential. Jim has been teaching for us and other CPA jurisdictions for 44 years. His students have called him “a man of brilliance” and his courses have altered careers and changed lives. He has been nationally honoured by the university community for “excellence in the design and delivery of life-long learning”. DR. JIM MURRAY, Hon BA, MA, MSc, EdD is CEO of optimal solutions international, a firm dedicated to helping people and organizations achieve their full potential. Jim has been teaching for us and other CPA jurisdictions for 44 years. His students have called him “a man of brilliance” and his courses have altered careers and changed lives. He has been nationally honoured by the university community for “excellence in the design and delivery of life-long learning”. DR. JIM MURRAY, Hon BA, MA, MSc, EdD is CEO of optimal solutions international, a firm dedicated to helping people and organizations achieve their full potential. Jim has been teaching for us and other CPA jurisdictions for 44 years. His students have called him “a man of brilliance” and his courses have altered careers and changed lives. He has been nationally honoured by the university community for “excellence in the design and delivery of life-long learning”.Improving Your Virtual Learning Experience
Live webinars have varying levels of expected interaction, with some requiring microphone and camera capabilities to support a proper learning experience – please email pdreg@bccpa.ca if you have concerns.
In general, we encourage participants to have their cameras turned on to enhance their virtual learning experience. This practice promotes a stronger connection with the instructor and fellow participants, and fosters improved communication and collaboration.
Live Webinar FAQs can be found here.
Registration terms and conditions, including the cancellation policy can be found here. If you require further assistance, please contact the PD Department.
Starting April 1, 2026, a 2.1% fee will be applied to all credit card transactions. Learn more about this fee and how it relates to PD registrations.