The Judgment Gap; Knowing When to Pause, Adapt and Escalate

A few months into his first job, Emeka received what appeared to be a straightforward instruction from his supervisor: “Use the usual process and get this order out today.” Emeka had been trained on the process.

He knew the steps. He knew where the forms were kept, who approved them and which department received the final request. There was only one problem. The “usual process” had been designed for normal orders. This particular order involved a customer whose payment had not yet reflected in the company’s system. Emeka noticed the discrepancy but proceeded because he did not want to be seen as difficult.

The order was eventually processed, but the company had to spend the next two days resolving the payment issue. When his supervisor asked why he had not raised the problem, Emeka gave an answer that many young employees give: “I was just following the process.” This is where judgment becomes more complicated. Organisations need rules. They need procedures, controls, approval structures and standard operating processes because allowing everyone to improvise would create chaos. Research on rulefollowing and discretion, however, shows that there are circumstances in which appropriate discretion can produce better judgments than mechanically applying a rule.

The critical word is appropriate. The lesson is not that employees should break rules whenever they think they know better. The lesson is that professional judgment requires understanding the boundary between compliance and discretion. Consider Nneka, who has recently completed NYSC and now works in customer operations for a telecommunications company. Her supervisor tells her that all unresolved customer complaints should be escalated at the end of the day. At 3:45 p.m., Nneka receives a complaint from a customer whose issue appears routine. She begins the standard investigation and discovers something unusual: several customers from the same location are reporting the same problem. She could wait until the end of the day and submit the complaints individually.

Technically, she would have followed the procedure. But judgment asks another question. “What does this information mean collectively?” Nneka realises that this may not be several unrelated complaints. It may be one network problem affecting multiple customers. She immediately informs her supervisor and includes the pattern she has noticed. She has not violated the procedure. She has understood it. This distinction matters because real organisations are systems of interdependent activities. A small observation in one department can become valuable information somewhere else. Employees therefore need enough awareness to recognise when something that appears ordinary is actually a signal. Research on standardisation and workplace discretion similarly shows why this matters. Employees do not operate in perfectly predictable environments.

Actual conditions can differ from the conditions anticipated when procedures were designed. Professional competence therefore includes knowing when circumstances still fit the standard process and when they have moved outside it.The young employee should not be thinking, “How do I escape this procedure?” The better question is, “Does the situation still fit the conditions for which this procedure was designed?” There is another important distinction: judgment does not always mean acting independently. Sometimes judgment means escalating. Imagine Tunde, who works in procurement. He notices that the price on a supplier's quotation is significantly higher than the previous quotation. He suspects the supplier has made an error, but he is not authorised to negotiate prices. Poor judgment would be to approve the quotation without checking. Another form of poor judgment would be to negotiate with the supplier himself and create a commercial commitment he was never authorised to make. Good judgment sits between the two.

Tunde flags the discrepancy and asks the appropriate person to review it. That is why judgment should not be confused with independence. A person can exercise excellent judgment by knowing when not to act alone. Situational judgment research reinforces this broader point. The ability to assess what a particular situation requires is associated with meaningful workplace outcomes. And research on rulefollowing suggests that discretion is valuable when it is grounded in the circumstances rather than personal preference. There is therefore a useful hierarchy for the young professional entering the workplace: First, understand the instruction. Second, understand the objective behind it. Third, assess whether the circumstances fit the normal process. Fourth, identify anything unusual, risky or contradictory. Fifth, act within your authority.

Sixth, escalate when the situation exceeds it. This may sound simple. It is not always easy. It requires enough confidence to ask questions without becoming argumentative, enough humility to accept that you may be wrong, enough awareness to notice what others have missed, and enough discipline to respect boundaries. This is why judgment cannot be reduced to intelligence. A very intelligent person can make a terrible workplace decision because intelligence can tell you what is possible without necessarily telling you what is appropriate. The employee who always says, “But I did exactly what you told me,” may eventually discover that the workplace was never measuring obedience alone.

It was measuring whether the employee could recognise what mattered. The best professionals are not people who never need instructions. They are people who gradually become capable of handling situations in which the instruction does not contain every answer. That is the point at which someone stops being merely a person who performs assigned tasks and becomes a professional who can be trusted with responsibility.