Shape the Course of Their Future Conduct

The … purpose of imposing a duty on a … decision-maker to give reasons for a decision ... is remedial. [It] has the purpose of enabling a person affected by the decision to be supplied with findings and … the evidence or other material on which those findings were based so that the person can shape the course of [their] future conduct ...

Justice Rares, Federal Court of Australia

The Parliament- (aka ‘us’) - acknowledges that when we impose a decision on a person, we take away some of their decision-making agency in service of an agreed greater good.

We erect a detour sign along their line of advance towards where they want to be: aka their Widget.

The law recognises that imposing our will on the decision making freedom of another is not a natural state of affairs.

It is an ill we must ‘remedy’. The greater damage to the person is not that they feel disempowered. No. It is that they will learn to prefer the feeling of being told what to do, over the anxiety that comes from freedom to decide.

The result? The average workplace.

The law says we must serve the person made ill by our decision by assisting them to reset their course.

We explain what our decision was, why we made it, and the information we relied upon to do so. Like monks, we shelter and nourish the pilgrim, and hand them the redrawn map so they are free to resume their journey of decision making.

And thus, we enable the person to resume shaping the course of their future conduct.

We must give ourselves the benefit the same wisdom and self-care in our decision making journey.

We will make decisions that are thwarted by external forces. Our Widget is our reason for the decision. The five steps to a good decision contain the information we relied upon to make it. Reflecting on both is our remedy.

And the starting point for shaping the course of our future conduct.