Critical thinking can be briefly defined as the sustained suspension of judgment with an awareness of multiple perspectives and alternatives. It involves at least four elements:
• Maintaining doubt and suspending judgment. By doubting all solutions at first and refusing to rush to a judgment, you create the necessary mental conditions to take a fresh, creative look at problems, and you keep open the chance to make a creative contribution.
• Being aware of different perspectives. Recognize that all interesting business problems have many dimensions and that the same problem can be viewed from different perspectives. You have to decide which major perspectives are useful for viewing a given problem.
• Testing alternatives or modeling solutions to problems and letting experience be the guide. Not all contingencies can be known in advance and much can be learned through experience. Therefore, experiment, gather data, and reassess the problem periodically.
• Being aware of organizational and personal limitations.