Forget Data Quality, What We Need Is Decision Quality

B. Shimmin

Summary Bullets:

• In our rush to capitalize upon big data, we have come a long way in ensuring that our decisions are based upon the most recent, complete and trustworthy data.
• However, we have not yet applied those lessons to the human heart, which must suffer the slings and arrows of cognitive bias.

I think it’s safe to say that we have achieved a workable level of data democratization within the enterprise wherein business stakeholders, not just data scientists, can access and act upon data. When lightweight data discovery and visualization tools entered the scene a few years ago and began breaking down the barriers between those two constituencies, things looked a bit treacherous. How could we be sure everyday business users had the right data, selected the right chart or drew the right conclusion? Was it really a good idea to let ‘Joe User’ meld data from a personal spreadsheet with information that has been carefully curated within a data warehouse?