Optimising Your Decision - Making Cognitive Biases and Cognitive Sciences

For the third consecutive year, the World Economic Forum’s The Future of Jobs Report 2025 identifies analytical thinking as the core skill most sought after by employers, with seven out of ten companies considering it essential.

Following the Growth Mindset and the science of learning modules of the program “Optimising Your Potential – 5 Key Skills for your Career”, this training aims to support your knowledge with high-quality decision-making: metacognition, critical thinking, and anti-bias safeguards.

Did you know that your brain, although highly efficient, regularly misleads you without you even realising it? These mental distortions, studied in particular by Daniel Kahneman (Nobel Prize in 2002 for his research on how the brain works), are mental shortcuts known as cognitive biases. While they simplify everyday life, they can also lead to predictable and costly errors, both professionally and personally.

This training enables you to better understand these unconscious mechanisms and to effectively regain control over your decisions:

• Identify the major cognitive biases that affect your everyday judgments
• Understand the contexts in which you are most vulnerable to these biases
• Master proven scientific strategies to limit their negative influence
• Concretely improve your decision-making in your projects, relationships, and daily challenges

Learn to think clearly and rationally, and to make better-informed decisions thanks to cognitive sciences.

At the end of the training, participants will be able to:

• Identify major cognitive biases and their effects on everyday judgments and decisions
• Explain the difference between cognitive biases, heuristics, logical fallacies, and mental models
• Detect high-risk situations in which these biases are most likely to influence reasoning
• Apply strategies from cognitive sciences to reduce the impact of biases in professional and personal life
• Adopt a critical and clear-minded thinking posture to improve the quality of decisions

Each module of the programme is based on an active, science-based and action-oriented pedagogical approach. Participants alternate between scientific theoretical input, interactive discussions, real-life case studies and high value-added practical exercises.

Structure of Each Module

•  Before the training

• •  30 minutes of mandatory learning content to be completed in advance (articles, videos, interviews, etc.)

•  Day 1 (3 hours – face-to-face)

• •  Interactive presentations and discussions around key concepts

  •  Workshops, role-playing and practical exercises to facilitate tool adoption
  •  Experience sharing and co-construction of solutions adapted to each participant

•  A few days later: follow-up virtual session (2 hours – online)

• • Feedback on real-life experimentation

  • Collective analysis of successes and challenges encountered

  • Additional input and personalised advice to ensure long-term integration of new skills

Personal action plan:
Between the two sessions, participants are invited to apply the methods and tools in real-life situations, fostering experiential learning and long-term skill acquisition.

Part 1 – Foundations of Cognitive Biases

•  Define what a cognitive bias is and understand its origins in brain functioning

•  Differentiate cognitive biases, heuristics, logical fallacies, and mental models

•  Explain why our brain uses mental shortcuts and in which situations they become problematic

Part 2 – Mapping Major Biases

• Identify the most common cognitive biases (confirmation bias, anchoring bias, optimism bias, etc.)

• Illustrate their concrete impacts through professional, social, and personal examples

• Identify contexts that favor their occurrence: cognitive overload, social pressure, fast decision-making, etc.

Part 3 – Reducing the Impact of Biases on Your Decisions

•  Apply tools from cognitive sciences to limit the influence of biases

•  Develop a posture of critical thinking and cognitive vigilance in everyday life

•  Discover the latest research on bias detection and correction (particularly in business, management, and recruitment)

• Managers, project leaders, and decision-makers required to make rapid decisions or operate in uncertain contexts

• Human resources professionals seeking to reduce bias in recruitment, evaluation, and talent management processes

• Subject-matter experts and analysts who must make judgments based on complex and interpretable data

• Anyone curious to better understand themselves and to think in a more rational and clear-minded way, particularly in personal and professional choices
  

At the end of the training course, participants will be able to download a certificate of attendance issued by the House of Training from the learner portal.